WASHINGTON (ABP) — Just days after a new Department of Education study suggesting children from similar backgrounds do about as well in public as in private schools, a group of congressional Republicans unveiled their latest plan for school vouchers.
The proposal, announced by House and Senate Republican leaders July 18, calls for $100 million in tuition and tutoring assistance for students wishing to leave public schools the government defines as “failing.” The scholarships could be spent on religious private schools.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings joined the congressmen at a press conference unveiling the proposal.
“Year after year, some schools fail to live up to the important standards that ensure our students get the education they deserve,” she said. “President Bush and I believe that families in communities where schools fall short deserve choices when it comes to their children's education.”
It would be the first widespread federal voucher program. Congress has resisted approving such programs while Bush has pushed for their approval, although Congress has also approved pilot federal voucher programs for the District of Columbia and for Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The legislation will likely not be taken up until 2007, when Congress must update the so-called “No Child Left Behind” education law.
Spellings' endorsement of the plan, however, came only four days after members of her department issued a report calling into question the assumptions behind voucher programs.
The study, which came from the department's independent research wing, examined the test scores of 700,000 fourth- and eighth-graders in public schools and compared them to scores from 25,000 students of the same age in private schools.
While private-school students as a whole generally outperformed public-school students in math and reading, the school found very few differences in performance when it compared public-school students to private-school students from similar socio-economic backgrounds. Public schools are, on average, far more heavily minority and comprised of middle-class and poor students than private schools.
Spellings told reporters that the report was “inconclusive,” since it did not track students over a number of years.
But Reg Weaver, president of the American Education Association, said vouchers simply won't fix the problems with public schools.
“The buzzword in education today is accountability, yet school vouchers divert scarce public school dollars to unaccountable private schools,” he said, in a statement responding to the plan. “Public schools can, and should, be held accountable, but lawmakers need to provide the resources to get the job done.”
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