From USA Today:
While vouchers will likely never be the clarion call of Democrats, they're beginning to make inroads among a group of young black lawmakers, mayors and school officials who have split with party and teachers union orthodoxy on school reform. The group includes Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams.
"You can no longer dismiss this as Catholic or right-wing," says Jeanne Allen of the Center on Education Reform, a Washington think tank.
…
The party split will be on display Wednesday when former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, now an independent, chairs a hearing on Washington, D.C.'s federally funded Opportunity Scholarship Program. It's perhaps the most high-profile voucher hearing of the past five years, coming a few days after two prominent Democrats, Dianne Feinstein and Robert Byrd, joined a handful of Republicans to criticize President Obama for letting funding for D.C.'s program lapse.
Lieberman's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled to hear testimony from families whose children attend private schools through the program. He'll also hear from Williams and Bruce Stewart, head of Sidwell Friends School, where Obama's two daughters are enrolled.
Obama last week said he'd fund the D.C. program until its current students graduate, but he maintains that vouchers are not a long-term education reform.
No, but the status quo is? There’s “change” for you.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama suggested that he'd weigh the evidence on vouchers but did not keep them in his first budget last week. Instead, he and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan agreed to fund D.C.'s program until the 1,716 students now enrolled graduate.
What is the evidence that Obama is willfully ignoring?
D.C.'s program — formally known as The District of Columbia School Choice Incentive Act — has served as a lightning rod since Congress approved it in January 2004 as the first federally funded private-school voucher.
A federal evaluation, released April 3 by the U.S. Education Department, found that after three years, there was a "statistically significant positive impact" on students' reading test scores, but not on their math scores. Overall, voucher students performed about three months ahead of their peers in public schools in reading, but no better in math.
Mary Lord, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education, says the statistics may be misleading because many of the voucher kids attend the city's worst schools. She says the voucher, which provides up to $7,500 a year, gives "enormous bang for the buck," considering that the city's per-pupil budget for year is, by one estimate, nearly $17,000 per student.
Twice the education for half the price.
But he’d rather keep kids in failing schools.
Every time I hear a liberal say “it’s for the kids,” I just have to laugh. If it were really for the kids, they’d let the kids out of failing schools, especially when it saves the government 50% to send them elsewhere.
No, this is not about the kids.