Private school vouchers not found educationally effective

Carol Forsloff - "BAEO
applauds and supports key tenets of the President's education reform
platform, especially his emphasis on turning around failing schools and
increasing the number of high-quality charter schools. However, his
stance on parental choice is wrong. "



With these remarks, Kevin
Chavous, President of the Black Alliance for Educational Options,  is
asking President Obama to continue school choice in Washington D.C.,  a
concept Chavous declares is working, in spite of the present concerns
about favoritism and not allowing all children the same access to
education.  How this is to be done is being debated, as it has been for
years, especially since civil rights legislation integrating public
schools.

Private school vouchers were advocated during the time of integration by white Southerners to avoid children having to go to racially mixed schools.  The buzz word for this became "quality education" and was eventually adopted by many conservatives, like Barry Goldwater who ran for President in part on the platform of educational choice.  The idea in present times has been embraced by some African American groups in order to secure better education for their children through scholarship opportunities.

The school voucher program is advocated by the Black
Alliance for Educational options, in spite of being questioned by
educational experts and government advisers.  Chavous, howwever,
continues to explain his group's reasons for maintaining the program.

 "President Obama spoke on NBC's Today Show September 27,
and said disadvantaged families without "a bunch of connections…should
be getting the same quality education for their kids as anybody else, "
explains Chavous.   "Yet his administration has acted to end what some
consider a highly successful Opportunity Scholarship Program in
Washington D.C.  The program provides vouchers to poor children so they
can opt out of failing schools to attend quality alternatives."

Chavou
maintains that Obama is contradicting his policies of equal opportunity
through the administration's target of the opportunity program.

Writing on behalf www.RevolutionInEducation.orgof
Black families and educators nationwide, Chavous suggests the
contradiction is the height of hypocrisy.  He is asking that the President
reverse his opposition to publicly funded school vouchers and allow
low-income children access to the same quality education he and his
children have enjoyed.

"As a beneficiary of a privately funded scholarship, you attended the most elite private school in Hawaii,"
Chavous writes. "You and Mrs. Obama have also chosen a private school
for your own children. Because there are not enough private scholarships
to serve all low-income families, you more than anyone should be an
advocate for government-funded opportunity scholarships nationwide."

Chavous
and the Black Alliance for Educational Options http://www.baeo.org/are
calling for President Obama to announce his support for to maintain the
D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, and embrace private school choice
for low-income families nationwide.

 We cannot continue
to ask parents to wait and hold out hope that reforms will eventually
succeed for their children," writes Chavous.  "The ability to choose a
high-quality school is critically important and should be extended to
all parents, regardless of income. As Dr. Martin Luther King
said during the civil rights movement, we need to act with the fierce
urgency of now. Our young people cannot wait. Opportunity scholarships
help educate children today."

Chavous said, in
reference to Obama, "He's talking the talk," said Chavous, "and
believing he's philosophically on our side, we're strongly urging him to
walk the walk."that BAEO was motivated to purchase the national
advertisement—and launch its new "Revolution in Education" campaign—when
President Obama himself pointed to the uneven playing field in the
District's schools.

But has the Opportunity Scholarship Program worked, as Chavous has claimed?


The
DC School Choice Incentive Act of 2003 was the first federally funded
private school voucher program in the United States.  It provided
scholarships of up to $7,500 for D.C. low income residents to send their
children to participating private schools.  Built into the Act was an
assessment program so that the success of it could be established and
tracked.

An independent
study as called for in the DC School Choice Incentive Act found the
following "key findings" in the third year report:

• "No
  evidence of a statistically significant difference in test scores
  between students who were offered an OSP scholarship and students who
  were not offered a scholarship.


• The program had a consistently positive impact on parent satisfaction and their perceptions of school safety.


• Students
  who were offered OSP scholarships did not report being more satisfied
  with school or feeling safer in school than those without access to
  scholarships.


• This same pattern of findings holds when the
  analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using a scholarship
  rather than being offered a scholarship, taking into account the
  approximately 20 percent of students who were offered but chose not to
  use their scholarships the first year."