Stop DC Vouchers

Oct. 13 After vouchers fail as part of the D.C. budget bill, the Senate now considers attaching the voucher proposal to the omnibus federal budget legislation.

Sept. 25 The Latest!!! Debate held today. The voucher bill bogged down!

Sept. 23 Alert!!! Senate likely to vote today. Call your Senator and Call these Senators TODAY!

Sept. 9!!! HOUSE HAS APPROVED SCHOOL VOUCHERS BY ONE VOTE while 38 black members attended a presidential debate in Baltimore. See how members of the House voted on D.C. vouchers.

SENATE COMMITTEE HAS APPROVED VOUCHERS! The school voucher legislation, S. 1583, may be voted upon in Congress. The fight is not over yet. Please call Congress now!

Issue Summary and History:

The voucher legislation is being considered as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2004 D.C. budget bill, HR 2765, which authorizes all spending of local ($7.4 billion) and federal dollars ($ 466 million) for the District of Columbia's 570,000 residents. This bill incorporates the voucher plan, HR 2556, of Representative Tom Davis (R- Va-11). Since February 2003, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.-6) had sought through his bill, H-R 684 (and S.4, Part B by Senator Judd Gregg), to institute a taxpayer funded private school tuition grants. HR 684 would award $3,750 to 1600 children at or near the poverty line. Davis' plan, HR-2556, would reportedly grant up to $7,500 to 2000 children.

Widely cited as a "new" funding stream, the dollars for a voucher plan would mean less funds are available overall to spend on other public education programs such as the No Child Left Behind Act, which is under-funded this year by $9 billion and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which since it was enacted has only been funded at a third of what was promised. A voucher program would leave the majority of the 67,000 children in D.C.'s public schools behind.

While D.C. Mayor Williams and School Board President Cafritz have changed their personal views on vouchers, the D.C. community has not. Vouchers were rejected in a referendum in 1982 and in a survey in November 2002. The School Board issued a resolution against vouchers in July 2002. See D.C. Voucher News for more information
Instituting this voucher plan that originated in Congress and not in the City Council undermines home rule.
Voucher experiments have already been tried and failed in Milwaukee, Dayton, Cleveland, New York and D.C .
Private schools in Washington D.C. and its suburbs have limited capacity to receive even a small number of voucher recipients and that is assuming the private schools would take them. Unlike public schools, private schools would not be bound by accountability for test scores, discrimination on disability or religious grounds or teacher qualifications.
One of the voucher plans, by many estimates, could cost the public school system at least $20 million.
We know vouchers do not work and D.C. does not want them! Read more here on why vouchers are bad policy. Read here for our press releases.

Stop D.C. Vouchers is an organized effort to educate and mobilize the residents of Washington, D.C., as well as supporters of public education to thwart congressional legislation to institute a voucher plan in Washington, D.C.

Stop D.C. vouchers

- engages in research, analysis, writing,.

- provides detailed information regarding the proposals for vouchers in D.C,;

- monitors and reports on the status of the voucher push;

- documents through a timeline the events relating to the move to institute vouchers,

- maintains a current list of voucher opponents;

- providing vehicles for public action to stop D.C. vouchers; and

- enabling supporters of public funding only for public schools to

- write

- email,

- call,

- fax, and

- participate in a petition drive

all aimed at local and federal officials who have the power to keep school vouchers out of Washington,

What are school vouchers?

School vouchers are grants for eligible students paid for by taxpayers to subsidize tuition at private schools. The private schools have complete discretion over whom they admit to their schools, and are free to choose or reject any student applicant with vouchers just as they may reject applicants not using tax-funded grants.

The voucher proposals for Washington, D.C. all originate in the United States Congress. There has been no local legislation from the Mayor or City Council of Washington to create, fund or support a voucher program. In 1981, D.C. residents rejected vouchers in a referendum. Polls done of residents in November 2002 support this outcome.

The are five pieces of legislation in Congress to fund and create a voucher program in Washington, D.C.. The Senate and the House of Representatives each have authorizing and appropriations bills. The Both pieces of legislation would provide taxpayer funded grants to income-eligible D.C. students to attend private schools. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va) is the author of the plan with the greatest congressional support, HR-2556, having been approved by the House Government Reform Committee.

Rep. Jeff Flake is the sponsor of the other legislation, HR- 684, now dormant, with a companion piece, S.4, in the Senate, sponsored by Senator Judd Gregg. (Rep. Flake is sponsoring legislation that was originally sponsored by former Rep. Dick Armey, under whose leadershp the bill passed the Senate and House but was vetoed by President Clinton in 1998.)

The U.S. House and U.S. Senate have now included funding for a voucher plan in the D.C. Appropriations bill, (over which Congress has authority to approve D.C.'s local and federally raised tax dollars). This use of Congressional riders has been a popular vehicle for implementing programs that lack local D.C. resident support.

Voucher Status. Summer 2003

Congress went into its 2003 summer recess leaving D.C.'s FY 2004 budget unfunded and a controversial set of voucher bills hanging over the city's head. Before the recess, the full United States House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate Appropriations committee held off on voting on school voucher legislation for Washington D.C. in the wake of opposition by the Washington D.C. community.

The inclusion of the hotly debated voucher plan in the D.C. budget bill has stalled the legislation that authorizes all spending for the District of Columbia.

NEW!!! EMAIL THE SENATE TO STOP DC VOUCHERS!!

CALL CONGRESS NOW

Read studies on vouchers: click here.

Call Tom Davis to oppose HR-2556 at 202-225-5074 or 202-225-1492.

Read Political Analysis.

See the Legislative Background of the DC voucher plans in Congress.