House rejects Armey's school voucher program

On October 21, by a vote of 166 to 257, the House rejected an amendment to the Title 1 Reauthorization Act for fiscal year 2000 (HR 2) sponsored by House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R.-Tex.) that would have allowed localities to use $100 million of the money to pay for school vouchers. The program would have given a $3,500 tuition payment to the parents of children in grades 1 to 5 who were enrolled in schools that their state's governor declares to be so bad as to be in an "academic emergency." All students K through 12 who were victims of crime at school would also have been eligible for the aid.

Ostensibly designed to aid poor and disadvantaged students, Title 1 is a massive program--$8A billion this year, raised to $9.9 billion for next year-that is the central part of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the main law giving federal aid to public schools. Congress is trying to reauthorize ESEA before going home.

Armey listed several primary reasons for his proposal. "There are some unsettling circumstances out there that are faced by the children of this nation, and I just want to review a few of them. There are 15,000 schools in America that are on a list of most-troubled Title I schools. One hundred of these have been on the list for 10 years or more. There are children who are being abandoned by the bureaucracy that does not seem to care, and we must find an alternative. Even perhaps more frightening, there are children that feel trapped in violent school"

Liberals, trying to cover all the bases, claimed that Armey's proposal would both decimate impoverished public schools and destroy the independence of private religious schools. What's more, it would be discriminatory, they claimed. "This is a reckless amendment that would divert funds from poor public schools to parochial schools;' said Rep. Bill Clay (D.-Ky.) "It provides no oversight of the quality of education provided with federal funds, which is the opposite of what we are doing in the rest of this bill.

"Also, federal funding of private school vouchers raises serious constitutional issues that could jeopardize the independence of religious schools and disrupt the administration of Title I programs.

"Finally, this bill would have a very discriminatory effect. Those students who get private school vouchers can receive up to $3,500 in vouchers, which is substantially more than per-pupil allocation for current Title I students who are in the public schools:'

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) summarized the underlying reason liberals fight any school voucher program tooth and nail. "How can the education establishment keep control of the billions of dollars that come into it? Well, the only way they can do that is by maintaining a one-size-fits-all government monopoly school system.

So determined were the Democrats and liberal Republicans--pushed by the big teachers unionsto prevent any competition in education from coming into existence that they went on to also defeat, 153 to 271, a proposal by Rep. Tom Petri (R.-Wis.) to set up a I G-state pilot program to use Title I funds to allow students to attend the private or public school of their choice.

A "yes" vote was a vote to authorize the states to spend $100 million of federal Title I aid on a school voucher program for students trapped in failing schools and victims of school violence. A "no" vote was a vote against the voucher program.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Nov 5, 1999
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