Republican leaders in the House say that Democrats are using the 2009 omnibus spending bill to try to kill the D.C. voucher program. Democrats deny the charge. Who’s right?

Created in 2004, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was originally authorized for 5 years – a term that would have expired this June. While a typical reauthorization would have extended the program for another five years, Democrats have explicitly authorized funding only through the 2009-10 school year. If that truncated funding were not enough to worry participating families, Democrats have also called for the granting of a new veto power over the program for the DC City Council. If the bill passes as it is currently written, the voucher program can only be funded if it is reauthorized by both Congress and the City Council.

Clearly, this new language doesn’t kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program outright. Just as clearly, it puts the program on life support, and it suggests that Congress is hoping the DC Council will pull the plug for them, so that they can’t be directly blamed for kicking 1,900 children out of private schools that they have chosen and become attached to.

Critics of the program complain that, after its first two years, it had still not raised overall student academic achievement by a significant margin (though parents are happier with their voucher schools). What is less well known is that the program has proven to be dramatically more cost effective than the DC public schools. While voucher and non-voucher students are performing at about the same level, DC public schools spend more than four times as much per student. Total per pupil spending in DC was $24,600 in 2007-08, while voucher schools receive an average of less than $6,000.

If you could save 75 percent on a purchase, get the same quality of service, and know you’d be happier with the result, wouldn’t you do it? It seems Congressional Democrats would not.