March 30, 2011
The House of Representatives passed a bill today that would restore and expand the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the flagship school choice program for low-income schoolchildren in the nation’s capital.
The SOAR Act offers the District of Columbia a savings of $15 million, Heritage Foundation expert Lindsey Burke said yesterday on Washington’s News Channel 8. The $7,500 voucher to attend a private school is just half of the subsidy a student receives to attend a city public school.
Watch the video of her appearance after the jump:
Burke went on to explain why throwing taxpayer money at the public school system is a flawed approach:
Unfortunately we’ve seen per pupil expenditures triple over the past few decades since the 1970s. Funding has continued to increase for public schools, not only in DC but across the country. We’ve seen reading achievements stay flat, we’ve seen math achievements stay flat. Graduation rates are the same today as they were in 1970. Unfortunately, pouring more money into that failed status quo is unlikely to improve achievement levels.
Burke predicted correctly that the House would pass the SOAR Act. But it remains to be seen what President Obama thinks of the bill. Obama sends his children to a Washington private school and was the recipient of a private scholarship as a child.
The Heritage Foundation has been at the forefront of the fight for school choice in the nation’s capital, home to one of the most under-performing school districts in the country. Read Burke’s post on the Foundry about the SOAR Act. Jason Richwine explained the DC program’s merits in an analysis last fall.
Norma Mellick - March 30, 2011
Would you please check on the Gulen Movement which is a group of charter schools that may be teaching more than the ABCs. Currently they are educating as many as 35,000 students in 100 publicly funded schools. A Turkish preacher, Fethullah Gulen started a world wide network of Muslims to take the principles of Islam and move the religion into the modern world. They make up the largest charter school network in the USA. They promote an Islamic agenda, but receive government money, unlike other religious schools in the USA.