While we were sleeping... (are vouchers coming?)

With all the hooplah in the last few months over new regulations for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it would be easy to miss the new push for vouchers.

On July 19 Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings went up to Capitol Hill to join some GOP lawmakers in proposing that $100 million be set aside to fund a voucher program for students whose schools consistently haven't lived up to the academic requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The program, dubbed America's Opportunity Scholarships for Kids, would pay private school tuition of up to $4,000 a year for children from failing schools to attend a private school.

The proposal itself is nothing new. Though this year's push is perhaps a little more concrete and forceful than in the past, the Bush Administration has asked Congress for funding for vouchers every year since 2001. USA Today quoted Spellings as saying that "The day of reckoning is coming. Accountability is hollow without real options for parents and without real options for kids," during her time on the Hill.

The prophetic tone of of Spellings' remarks reinforced the perception that Peter Laarman expresses so eloquently. Republicans are on an almost Biblical "crusade" to help "deliver" the American underclass from the "Egypt" of the American public school system. Laarman's July 19th Blog on the topic is entertaining. (Lest anyone think ill of me, I should make clear that I'm poking fun at voucher advocates, not God; I may teach in the Egypt of the public school system, but I'm a Baptist who spent 10 years in overseas missions before becoming a teacher...)

The real irony of this year's proposal is its timing. A few days before the Spellings proposal, the Department of Education's very own National Assessment of Educational Progress office (NAEP) released a report comparing public and private education. The report, Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, concluded that yes private school students get better scores on reading and math -- but that it was because of the students, not the teaching at private school. When factors like socio-economic status and disability were controlled for, private schools didn't perform any better than public school overall.

The NAEP report itself was embarrassing for voucher advocates. More embarrassing is the perception that Secretary of Education Spellings either was unaware of the report before she went up to the Hill to promote this year's voucher plans or, worse, tried to hide the report. National Public Radio has a good piece on that controversy...