Future of D.C. school vouchers worries parents

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

"We're going to have a battle," she said. "I'm ready to do that because they need to keep the program going. Without it, the students don't have a choice, and I don't think that's fair."

The $14 million-a-year initiative, the first federally funded voucher program in the country, was passed by a Republican-led Congress in 2004 and championed by the District's mayor at the time, Anthony A. Williams, a Democrat.

The voucher bill set aside $13 million a year for teacher training and recruitment for public schools and $13 million a year for charter schools, in addition to funding for vouchers.

Norton opposed

Many Democrats in Congress opposed the program, including the District's nonvoting representative, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.Vouchers take precious funding away from public schools, she said.

Congress authorized the program for five years, and must reauthorize it next year if it is to continue. Mrs. Norton said she will do her best to make sure that doesn't happen, and now that her party holds the majority in Congress, she could be more successful than she was in 2004.

"I think there's very little chance that, when this runs out, it will be renewed, " she said.

Mrs. Norton met with officials from the Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the scholarships. "I have said to them that I think the only responsible thing to do is to prepare the parents to understand that the program is unlikely to be funded, that it was experimental, it was never meant to be permanent."

Mrs. Norton acknowledges the low test scores and low graduation rates of the District's public school system. Instead of offering a limited number of students each year the chance to attend private school, she wants to use every penny allocated for D.C. education to improve public schools for all students, she said.

She said she supports school choice, but in the form of charter schools, not vouchers.