Playing games with school choice

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A recently leaked draft report from the Government Accountability Office highlighting apparent problems with schools taking part in the District's voucher program is hardly a smoking gun. Rather, it's further evidence of how Democrats are playing politics with our children's education and how further study is needed to accurately assess progress of the voucher system.

The confidential draft report, created at the behest of three liberal Democrats, Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Dick Durbin of Illinois and D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, was presumptuously leaked to local media before the Department of Education had time to respond, clarify and explain some of the GAO's findings. As a result, the public heard only an incomplete picture of a program that is by many measures a success and enjoys tremendous parental satisfaction.

Understandably, federal educators were furious that the report, which apparently nitpicks at the bureaucratic minutiae involved in school administration, was released to members of the media who then predictably trumped up the findings in everything from blaring headlines to bellowing from liberal detractors. Press reports failed to cite a 2002 GAO report that found black students who used vouchers to attend private schools showed greater improvements in math and reading than students in public schools. It also found high parental satisfaction among parents of all racial and ethnic groups.

This most recent GAO report failed to compare the voucher schools with non-voucher schools, and, if it had, chances are the non-voucher public schools would have fallen even shorter. Public schools are clearly failing in a number of areas, even in wealthy neighborhoods. A recent report by the Pacific Research Institute found that in the ritzy town of Saratoga, Calif., a bedroom community of Silicon Valley, just 12 percent of students taking the 2006 California Standards Test's algebra 1 exam scored at or above proficiency. Only 23 percent of students taking the state geometry exam scored at or above proficiency. In Laguna Beach, where homes are worth an average of $1.5 million, a mere 19 percent of high school students passed the Early Assessment Program college-ready English test. In Marin County, home of the nation's highest density of BMWs, only 23 percent of San Marin high schoolers passed the EAP college-ready exam. Clearly, our public schools need overhaul.

The flexibility and choices afforded to low-income families through the voucher program are also an important consideration. In the District, there are 1,900 children from households with an average income of $22,963, many living in areas where schools fail to meet the federal standards of adequate academic progress.

Demand for the voucher program is high. A study by Georgetown University found most parents are very satisfied with their children's involvement in voucher schools, particularly when it comes to their child's self esteem, work ethic and attitudes about learning. Roughly 90 percent of parents said they plan to keep their child in a voucher school the following year.

But the competition is stiff. The Washington Scholarship Fund, which oversees implementation of the congressionally mandated D.C. voucher program, reports that for every applicant accepted to one of the participating 54 voucher schools, there are three more who were denied. Clearly the District's voucher program is a success and deserves continued support. No shortsighted report criticizing a school's lack of gymnasium or its compliance with every bureaucratic detail will prove otherwise.