President's Budget Proposal Fails to Fund D.C. Voucher Program
WASHINGTON, February 13, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Despite reauthorization agreement, Obama aims to halt highly-successful Opportunity Scholarship Program
President Barack Obama's newly-released federal budget would not provide funding to the highly-successful D.C. voucher program, despite an agreement signed by the president last year that reauthorized the program.
The American Federation --the nation's voice for school choice--strongly decries the president's failure to provide funding to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which currently provides scholarships to more than 1,600 children from low-income families across the nation's capital to attend the private schools of their parents' choice.
Though the OSP is in little danger of going unfunded--Congress is charged with appropriating funds, and House Speaker John Boehner is an ardent defender of the program--the move by President Obama is effectively a reneging on the promise he made last April in a budget agreement he signed that helped avert a government shutdown.
"The president says he's for education reform, but his actions continually aim to send
