In a late-night vote Tuesday, the House of Representatives, by a razor-thin margin, approved the controversial bill to provide $10 million in private school tuition grants to at least 1,300 D.C. schoolchildren next year. As Gadfly reported last week, three prominent D.C. officials, all former voucher foes, came out strongly in favor of the new "scholarship" program. Since then, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), also a longtime voucher opponent, has reiterated her support for the program, claiming that, while she does not support vouchers for her own state, she believes "local leaders should have the opportunity to experiment with programs that they believe are right for their area."
This week's vote, which was divided almost exactly along party lines, is doubly interesting in light of a recent Heritage Foundation report showing that 38 percent of House Democrats send at least one child to private school - thus exercising private school choice of their own. This number, of course, does not include the countless others who exercise school choice by buying homes in good public school districts, a luxury that poor families cannot afford. What's good enough for the goose ought, in our view, also be available to the gander.
In another interesting turn of events, when queried by Siobhan Gorman for the Washington Monthly, NEA president Reg Weaver came out swinging against the D.C. voucher initiative. When pressed on the details, he couldn't quite explain why the program should not be tried in the District. In the end, he was forced to make the perfect the enemy of the good by arguing that vouchers "would only help a limited number of students [in D.C.]." When asked if he would support a program that gave all students vouchers, Weaver responded, "If they would give [all] 67,000 students a voucher, yeah."
Gadfly applauds Mr. Weaver for his generous and visionary boldness and is pleased to note that he seems to have embraced the proposition that education choice for all is the best of all education systems. We look forward to co-publishing with the NEA a new manifesto on behalf of universal school choice.
"D.C. school voucher bill passes in House by 1 vote," by Spencer S. Hsu and Justin Blum, Washington Post, September 10, 2003
"How members of Congress practice school choice," by Krista Kafer and Jonathan Butcher, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, September 3, 2003
"Labor Pain," by Siobhan Gorman, Washington Monthly, September 2003
"Pro-choice," by Siobhan Gorman, Washington Monthly, September 2003
