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Choice hits Capitol Hill

The school choice movement has enjoyed a great deal of success so far this year, as witnessed in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and, most recently, Arizona (along with Rhode Island, Utah, Florida and Pennsylvania).  And with so many states introducing school choice, it was only a matter of time before the juggernaut hit Congress:

Congressional Republicans on Tuesday proposed a $100 million plan to let poor children leave struggling schools and attend private schools at public expense.

The voucher idea is one in a series of social conservative issues meant to energize the Republican base as midterm elections approach. In announcing their bills, House and Senate sponsors acknowledged that Congress likely won’t even vote on the legislation this year.

Still, the move signals a significant education fight to come. GOP lawmakers plan to try to work their voucher plan into the No Child Left Behind law when it is updated in 2007.

"Momentum is on our side," said Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House education committee.

The article addressed the timing, since this comes on the heels of the NCES study.  Spellings’s comment:

Spellings said she first learned about the study — one produced by the Education Department’s research arm — by reading about it in the newspaper. She said the agency must improve the way it releases such reports. But she rejected any suggestion that the department buried the study because it put public schools in a favorable light compared to private ones.

On one hand, I’m tempted to dismiss that statement.  But Eduwonk’s take is awfully interesting:

…I have a little trouble believing that she hadn’t even caught a whiff of it — she’s pretty plugged in and everyone else knew about it. But, that said, the real story here is that the 2002 reorganization of federal education research is actually working. Like the NAEP charter school data from a few years ago, that the politicals were caught somewhat flatfooted is a good thing and shows that the firewalls are having some effect.

And this New York Times story on the voucher bill also mentions this about the study:

Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department, said that the secretary’s office had received the report for review two weeks before its release.

Mr. Whitehurst said that his office was responsible for failing to alert the secretary to the report’s importance. (emphasis added)

Upshot: between the aforementioned "firewalls" and bureaucratic mishaps, the ball got dropped.  Cry me a river, will ya?  In any event, I’m hard-pressed to disagree there was a reason it was released on a Friday.  But because (as Kevin Drum and Eduwonk have pointed out) this study doesn’t begin to mean what many school choice opponents think it does, also rest assured that we’ve only begun dismantling it.  Stay tuned.

Back to the federal bill.  Spellings’s comment here–again, from the NYT article–pretty much sums up our stance in a nutshell:

Whatever the report’s findings, Ms. Spellings said, parents with children in public schools that repeatedly fail deserve more options.

“The thing we wake up worrying about every day at the Department of Education is grade level proficiency for every child by 2013-2014,” Ms. Spellings said. “Often that will be found in a public school. But when that doesn’t happen, what do we do?”

One of the things I’ve said before and will continue to repeat is that school choice is not an all-or-nothing proposition.  Public schools in Milwaukee, Washington D.C. and Cleveland have not crumbled in the wake of school choice, and they never will–because school choice and public schools will always coexist. 

Good public schools have absolutely nothing to fear from this or any other school choice legislation.  In fact, this particular bill (which will allow students to attend private or public schools), much like those introduced in Milwaukee, Florida and Cleveland, really isn’t meant for them anyway.  It’s designed for those kids who are presently in schools that have consistently failed to do their duty, kids who are stuck there and have no viable alternatives.  Those are the children who would otherwise be trapped while the system took 10 to 12 years getting its act together. 

Will it pass?  Let’s wait and see.

UPDATE: Alexander Russo examines the bill in light of Bush’s stem cell veto and says that while both appear to be “political theater” ahead of the November elections, the legislation might get traction:

What’s different about the voucher initiative, it seems to me, is that it could in some form very well pass the House and Senate and become law. More and more lawmakers, including Democratic ones, have voted for vouchers in various circumstances. Public school choice — including NCLB transfers — haven’t seemed to have worked Ditto for ‘restructuring.’ And at least some of the Constitutional arguments against vouchers are gone.

That last part is significant, in light of the 2002 Zelman ruling; as has been repeatedly observed, there are essentially no constitutional barriers to school choice on the federal level.