Morning Bell: An Opportunity to Throw Kids A Lifeline

Mike Brownfield / March 31, 2011

In the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, children suffer in a public education system rife with violence and ranked among the worst in the nation. Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives took action to give those students some hope when it voted to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (D.C. OSP), which provides scholarships to low-income children, allowing them to attend their school of choice. It was one of the most consequential education votes that Congress will make this year. The program empowers parents, and it rejects the notion that a child should be relegated to a failing public school because they were born in the wrong zip code. Yet, remarkably, the program faces opposition from President Barack Obama and Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

The D.C. OSP was first launched in 2004, and since that time more than 3,300 children have had the chance to escape the underperforming and unsafe D.C. public schools. The statistics are jarring. As The Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke notes, the D.C. public school system ranks 51st in the nation. Only 14 percent of 8th graders are proficient in reading, and just 55 percent of students in D.C. public schools graduate. Under the D.C. OSP, though, students have blossomed amid otherwise unfertile ground. Burke writes:

Congressionally mandated evaluations of the D.C. OSP, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, revealed that scholarship students were making gains in reading achievement compared with their public school peers.  The gains in academic attainment, however, have been most astounding. (more…)