Congress Voting to Save School Choice in D.C.
Tomorrow, Congress is scheduled to vote on the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, which would reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The OSP was scheduled to expire later this year. Back in December, I expressed skepticism about a standalone reauthorization bill because the Obama administration has repeatedly worked to undermine or eliminate the school choice program, even though the OSP has the support of local Democratic politicians such as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and a majority of the D.C. City Council. Fortunately for the low-income children attending the schools of their choice through the OSP, the president has signaled that he does not intend to veto the legislation:
“While the administration continues to strongly oppose the private school vouchers program within this legislation, known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the administration will continue to use available SOAR Act funds to support students returning to the program until they complete school, so that their education is not disrupted,” the Office of Management and Budget said.
The White House stopped short of issuing a veto threat. But the administration made clear its distaste for the voucher program, which President Obama has tried to kill several times. The measure, a priority of former Republican Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, provides money for some students in D.C. to attend private school.
Predictably, the White House claimed that studies of the D.C. OSP show it has "not yielded statistically significant improvements in student achievement by scholarship recipients compared to other students not receiving vouchers," ignoring that the OSP achieves those similar results at a fraction of the cost (less than $9,000 per voucher on average versus about $30,000 per district school student), and that the same random-assignment study found that OSP students were 21 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than the control group.
Low-income students shouldn't be condemned to low-quality schools just because their parents cannot afford a home in a wealthy neighborhood. As the Washington Post wrote in a recent editorial, "The scholarships provide a lifeline to low-income and underserved families, giving them the school choice that more affluent families take as a given." The D.C. OSP was an important step toward breaking the link between home prices and school quality, so it's encouraging to see that D.C. is not likely to take a step backward. Ideally, though, Congress would take the next step from school choice to educational choice by enacting a universal education savings account program.
