School Choice Undermines Urban School Districts
Proponents of school choice have dubbed this week School Choice Week. In honor of School Choice Week, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the Secretary of Education under the first George Bush and today the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced a new bill to provide a kind of federal school voucher program.
According to the NY Times, Alexander’s bill would re-purpose $24 billion federal education dollars, 41 percent of all federal education spending. Alexander’s bill would allow states to choose “whether to give the lowest-income families the money as individual scholarships to pay for private school tuition, or to attend a pubic school outside the child’s traditional neighborhood zone, or a charter school.”
He claims the money would provide a voucher for 11 million low-income children with an average per-child grant of $2,100. The NY Times explains, “Under Mr. Alexander’s bill, states would be allowed to opt in to the voucher program. States could also continue to distribute federal funds to public schools rather than individual students.” While there is little chance vouchers will be adopted by today’s U.S. Senate, the introduction of such a bill illustrates the dogged persistence of those who support this old, old idea.
Voucher programs have never been popular. When proposed as ballot issues across the states, voucher plans have never been adopted by the voters. Not ever. The oldest voucher plans in Cleveland and in Milwaukee have neither significantly demonstrated higher academic