The D.C. voucher movement is picking up steam and is poised to become "a mass movement."
So says D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who led more than one thousand pumped-up supporters of the embattled D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in a rally cry on Capitol Hill September 30 to "Put kids first."
Evoking the words of the spiritual "Go Down Moses," the former D.C. mayor called on President Obama to support the school voucher program that provides federally funded scholarships of up to $7,500 to low-income children to attend private schools.
"Go down, Mr. President, way down in Washington D.C., and let our children go to the school of their choice where they can get a quality education," said Barry, who added that his son benefited from school choice. "A lot of parents don't have that kind of choice," said Barry. "I believe in choice."
The rally marked the culmination of an intense month between voucher supporters and opponents who are struggling to win public opinion to their side.
Enacted in 2004 to provide greater educational options to poor children trapped in D.C.'s failing and low-performing schools, the scholarship program enabled 1,716 students to enroll in 51 private and parochial schools last year, and has served more than 3,000 children since it began. Participating families have an average income of about $24,000.
In March, at the behest of the National Education Association and civil liberty groups including People for the American Way, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) inserted language into the $410 billion omnibus
spending bill effectively terminating the program unless Congress reauthorizes it. The Obama administration later announced that it would allow current voucher recipients to remain in the program until they graduate, but was closing the program to new students.
The battle has pitted a growing number of Democratic African-American parents, community leaders and conservative education reform groups, against congressional Democrats backed by teachers unions and other voucher critics.
On the same day as President Obama's September 8 speech to the nation's schoolchildren, pro-voucher African-American civil rights advocates tried to get themselves arrested by holding a civil disobedience protest in front of the U.S. Department of Education. After a standoff with federal law enforcement but no arrests, protesters left feeling they had made their point.
"You may not handcuff me, but you're handcuffing our kids and holding them back," said protest organizer and former Democratic D.C. Councilman Kevin Chavous, board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), which sponsored the September rally. "We are not going to be deterred from making sure this program is reauthorized. We're willing to put our bodies on the line.... We'll be back."
Supporters say the program has been a lifeline for D.C.'s schoolchildren, whose crime-ridden public schools rank worst in the nation. According to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report, by the time D.C. students reach the 8th grade, only 12 percent are proficient in reading and only eight percent are proficient in math. Only nine percent will graduate from college within five years.
"D.C. public schools are horrible," said Tania Phillips, who was attending the rally with her daughter's class from Nannie Helen Borroughs private school in Northeast, where her daughter attends by virtue of a scholarship. "If my child has to go back to public schools, she will not go back to D.C. public schools."
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