School vouchers to start by fall

By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

. . . which will conduct a lottery to select students
for the vouchers, if more than 2,000 of the
District's 68,000 students apply.

School vouchers to start by fall


By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES



Education Secretary Rod Paige said the school-voucher program in
the District will be available for low-income D.C. students this fall,
clearing the way to implement the program nationwide within the next
few years.
"We're very much aware of the time crunch," Mr. Paige told an
audience at the Heritage Foundation yesterday. "All of these things
will be in place. ... We need to get this program up and running
immediately, so that children can benefit from it this fall when
school starts again this coming year."
Mr. Paige said he hopes similar voucher programs will be started
immediately with federal funding by other states under a $50 million
school-choice program that Congress authorized as part of the No Child
Left Behind Act. He said the public-school system needs more
competition from charter and private schools.
The secretary said he is pushing ahead this week to complete a
formal agreement with D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, Democrat, for
joint operation of the voucher program. He said he expects to open
competition to choose a program administrator, which will conduct a
lottery to select students for the vouchers, if more than 2,000 of the
District's 68,000 students apply.
Selection of an administrator and the lottery will occur within
the next several months. In the meantime, Mr. Paige and Mr. Williams
are expected to choose a group to serve as the interim director of the
voucher program.
Even though the $14 million for program funding was attached to
the massive spending package passed by Congress last week, it hasn't
put an end to the controversy.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and D.C. Delegate Eleanor
Holmes Norton, both Democrats, said at an anti-voucher rally last week
that they would work to repeal the voucher provision before it is
implemented in September.
"Even after this vote, don't bank on vouchers coming to D.C.,"
said Mr. Kennedy, who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate's
education committee.
He said he wants to shift voucher funding to D.C. public schools
and added that the voucher bill was placed in the omnibus spending
package because it wouldn't survive a straight up-or-down vote in the
Senate. Funding for the five-year demonstration program, which was
included in the annual D.C. appropriations bill, was held up by the
Senate and never made it to the floor for a vote.
Mr. Paige had harsh words for the voucher opponents.
"I respectfully warn those in Congress and the District who ponder
such continued political warfare that their actions will not stop us,"
he said. "Their threats are unworthy and harmful. They are on the
wrong side of history, and history will judge them so."
He asked the opponents "to step aside and to give way."
"The future of our children is at stake, and it would be
unconscionable to work against their best interests, to desire
failure, to actively labor to bring obstruction and sabotage."
Mr. Paige was undeterred about the potential stoppage of the
program.
"I want to see every school system freed of these monopolistic
requirements" enjoyed by the public-school establishment, he said. "It
prevents innovation, dulls performance. We'll see multiple delivery
systems, but the public school system will be the heavy lifter."
He added that there are similar programs currently under way in
Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado, but the D.C. program is
different because it is the first to be federally funded.
"Hopefully, we won't have to wait five years to see how this turns
out [in the District] to have it replicated" elsewhere, the secretary
said.
Mr. Paige said he and the mayor "want D.C. Choice to be a model
program for the nation."
"Of course, by themselves, opportunity scholarships will not solve
the problems facing D.C. schools," where reading, writing and
mathematics achievement is the lowest in the nation.
For D.C. students, vouchers also are an issue of "social justice"
and "civil rights" to allow poverty-stricken children trapped in
poorly performing public schools an opportunity for better education
and a brighter future, he said.
"Monopoly is simply the wrong policy for education, just as it is
with every other business or endeavor," he said. "History has proven
time and time again that monopolies don't work. In education, year
after year of isolation from any alternative thinking creates an
educational funk that frustrates needed change."