Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
The 500,000 people who live in Washington, D.C., are accustomed to being humiliated by Congress, which dictates everything from how the city spends its tax dollars to how it collects the garbage — while denying Washingtonians a vote in the body that runs their affairs. This arrangement becomes painfully obvious at election time, when Republicans typically grandstand for the far right by ramming outrageous proposals down the throats of the city's overwhelmingly Democratic voters.
Thanks to this dictatorial oversight, the District of Columbia is the only city in the country that is barred by Congress from spending locally raised tax dollars to provide abortions for impoverished women. For a decade, the same intrusive Congress barred the city from extending domestic partnership rights to gay people.
This year, Congress is trying to force the city to send about 1,300 public school children to private, mainly parochial, schools at public expense over the objections of the school board and a majority of the city's elected officials, including Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting representative in the House.
There are a handful of small voucher programs at work around the country. But voters have rejected statewide voucher initiatives in state after state, including California, home of Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has inexplicably endorsed the tyrannical Washington proposal — one that would lead to an uprising were it tried in her home state.
This proposal is antidemocratic, but its faults run deeper. It further erodes the wall between church and state by pushing children toward parochial schools, which make up a vast majority of Washington schools. Private school tuition would be covered by the proposed stipend of up to $7,500. This new federal money is likely to drive out the private money that Washingtonians have been raising for children trying to move into private schools.
This proposal sends the wrong message by funneling public money to private schools at a time when public schools are broke. It also brings attention to the fact that the Bush administration has failed to finance fully its vaunted public school initiative, No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to remake public education but is rapidly becoming just so much window dressing.
I think there is an issue that was mischaracterized in this story -- it says that the city being forced to send the students to private schools, but it says it in a way that makes it seem like the students are being forced. No one is forcing the students. They (or at least their parents) want to go to the these schools.
It also misrepresents the financial situation by saying that "public schools are broke". DC spent $10,852 per student in the school year ending June 2001. Private schools are accepting students on a $7,500 voucher. If they can give a child a better education on less money, then the allegation that public schools are broke is indefensible.
It is really disheartening when you put this in the perspective of this being a fight between the Democratic Party, who is fighting tooth and nail to do anything they can, and the constituency of black voters -- who they are supposed to represent democratically -- who support vouchers in every poll I have seen. They support them, because at the end of the day, it isn't some government principle or Democrats vs. Republicans that they care about. They want to see their children educated; they want to see them have a better life than they had themselves. The public school system doesn't allow that -- it prevents it. By the time the public school system is �fixed� (if that is even possible) it will be ten years down the road, after their children have already dropped out of a defunct school and ended up either pregnant and unable to support themselves or their children, or in prison. That is the reality staring them in the face, and opposition to vouchers puts them one step closer to that fate.
Phelps:
There's a whole series of oversimplifications lurking in that expenditure figure (as well as the sociological assumptions at the end of your post, but one thing at a time).
I only have the 1999-2000 school year figures in conveniently sortable form. For that year, D.C.'s per child expenditure was $10,107. But of that, only $4,201 was instructional expense At 41.6%, the lowest percentage of instructional-to-total expenditure in the nation. Operations and maintanance expense was $1283 per student, the highest in the nation and reflective of the poor conditions of the physical plant they operate in.
I have no way to access equivalent data for private schools, but the point is less than half the figure you mention is actually used to educate. More, it's not the best way to judge the situation anyway. Much of the non-educational expenditure is independant of the number of students enrolled, so by moving kids out of the system you'd inflate that figure without any real change having taken place.
And the real problem with the voucher system is that it can't be universal.There's simply not enough seats to go around. So you have to do what you must with the public school system anyway.