Voices of School Choice

Rory Cooper / April 21, 2009

D.C. STUDENTS: SAVE OUR SCHOOLS

Blocking Children’s Path to a Better Future

• Congress Blocks Opportunity: Congress recently approved action that threatens to immediately phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), a federal initiative that currently helps 1,715 disadvantaged children attend private schools in the nation’s capital.
• Safe and Effective Learning Environments: Studies of scholarship families show higher parent satisfaction with their children’s school safety and learning environment. Test scores showed that students offered scholarships were performing approximately 3.1 months ahead in reading of students not offered vouchers and an equivalent of 3.7 months of total additional learning.
• Traded in for Low Performance: Eliminating DCOSP would send these children back into a public school system that ranks 51st nationally in student achievement, where barely half of all students graduate high school.
• President Obama Says: “[Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan will only use one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works” (March 2009). (more…)