New DC Voucher Bill Introduced

July 30, 2009

According to an Alliance for School Choice press release:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) today unveiled a bipartisan reauthorization bill for the D.C. school voucher program.  Lieberman, along with Susan Collins (R-ME) and four other senators, introduced legislation this morning to reauthorize and strengthen the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) for five years…

 Under Senator Lieberman’s bill, the program would be preserved and strengthened significantly. The Lieberman bill would increase scholarship amounts to $9,000 for K-8 students and $11,000 for high school students­indexing the scholarship amounts to inflation. While these amounts remain significantly below the amounts for the D.C. Public Schools, they provide the necessary increases to account for inflation over the past five years.

The bill would also:

–Give scholarship priority to siblings of students who currently participate in the program
–Require participating schools to have a valid certificate of occupancy
–Require teachers of core subject matters to have bachelor’s degrees
–Require an Institute of Education Sciences annual evaluation of the program
–Require students to take nationally norm-referenced tests

I hear that this bill addresses all of the issues raised by Senator Durbin’s bill without any of the program-killing provisions.  If Durbin is really motivated by the concerns he has expressed, such as teachers having bachelors degrees and schools reporting test results, we may be getting close to a compromise.  Of course, that is a big IF.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Bipartisan Senate Groups Asks Duncan to Reverse Good Friday Massacre

April 29, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

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Posted by matthewladner

Lieberman and Collins: Save the 200 victims of the Friday Night Massacre

April 23, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

In a bipartisan appeal, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins wrote a letter to Secretary Duncan asking him to reverse the Departments decision to rescind Opportunity Scholarships to 200 DC school children (HT Whitney Tilson).

The letter reads:

Dear Secretary Duncan,

We are following up on our letter dated March 17, 2009, asking that you refrain from making any administrative rules  or policies that would disrupt the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) or prevent the grantee from accepting applications and students for the 2009-2010 school year. Prior to a response to our inquiry, we were disappointed to learn that you subsequently made the choice not to allow new students to enroll in the program.

By preventing new scholarships from being awarded, you are effectively ending a program before Congress has had the opportunity to consider reauthorizing it. Therefore, we respectfully request that you consider reversing your decision.

As we noted in our letter to you, the future of the OSP is presently under consideration by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. We will be holding hearings on the program in May, and Majority Leader Reid  has promised floor time to consider a reauthorization proposal. We respectfully request that you refrain from implementing significant changes to the program until we have an opportunity to review the program’s results, hold  public hearings, and have a thoughtful debate about the future of the program.

Your recent decision to suspend the program for new entrants will hurt families who are searching for other options for their children. We understand that many of these parents had been notified that they would, in fact, receive scholarships for their children. Now that the DC Public School’s out of boundary process has been completed and the majority of public charter school deadlines have passed for the 2009-2010 school year, the suspension decision will leave these families with little or no opportunity to explore viable alternatives.

We will continue to support the D.C. Public School System in its efforts to improve outcomes for all students. However, in the interim, we must continue to provide options such as the OSP and provide families real choices in ensuring access to a quality education for their children.

We thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Joseph I. Lieberman

Susan M. Collins

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Posted by matthewladner