Senate Won’t Buy Even a Diluted Version of Voucher Remedy

It was one of the cornerstones of President Bush’s campaign: vouchers for low-income students caught in failing schools. But on Tuesday--to no one’s surprise--the Senate defeated, on a 58-41 vote, a last, modest effort by conservative Republicans to include a voucher provision in education reform legislation sought by Bush.

The amendment, offered by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), would have provided $50 million for a pilot voucher program limited to 10 school districts in three states. Under the proposal--similar to efforts defeated in the House--parents of students attending poor-performing schools would get educational certificates to use to send their children to better schools, either public or private.

The failed initiative was only a sliver of Bush’s vow during the 2000 presidential race to provide vouchers to all low-income parents whose children attend schools judged as failing for three years in a row.

Bush’s original plan called for Title I funds, federal money targeted to help low-income students, to be made available to parents to use any way they saw fit if the school their child attended did not improve within the time limit.

But facing a narrowly divided Congress--even before the defection from the GOP of Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont gave Democrats control of the Senate--Bush signaled early this year that a rejection of vouchers by Capitol Hill wouldn’t be a deal-breaker in passage of an education bill.

Education reform legislation has been a priority for the White House, and both the House and Senate versions of the bill provide for increased funding and higher levels of accountability for schools, including annual testing and financial repercussions for nonperformance.

The bill passed by the House last month also includes unprecedented language permitting parents whose children attend failing schools to receive federal funds that could be used to pay for private tutors or transportation costs to send students to a different institution. The Senate, which is expected to work long hours this week to complete its education bill, will almost certainly include a similar plan in its measure.

In the Senate vote on vouchers, 38 Republicans and three Democrats supported the voucher amendment, while 46 Democrats, 11 Republicans and Jeffords, the chamber’s newly declared independent, opposed it. California’s two senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, were among those voting against it.

The voucher issue provokes bitter divisions, and both advocates and opponents of Gregg’s amendment argued their position was a matter of doing what is right and fair.

Gregg said the voucher program would provide needed options to low-income children attending inadequate schools. “If we don’t get on the path of correcting these schools which are failing and we do not get on the path of giving children in those schools options to learn in an environment which is conducive to learning, then we will lose another generation, and as a nation we can’t afford that.”

Gregg charged that many foes of school vouchers are elitists who have sent their own children to expensive private schools.

Arguing hotly against vouchers, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the federal government has already failed low-income students by not fully funding existing programs. The $50 million for the demonstration program proposed by Gregg, she warned, would tax already thin resources.

“We need to invest in the right ways,” Murray said. “There are no magic bullets, and I hope we aren’t tempted by the false promise of vouchers.”

The margin of defeat, as well as the number of Republicans who voted no, were touted by voucher foes, including Bob Chase, president of the National Education Assn.

Lawmakers voting against the amendment know “that vouchers are not real reform,” said Chase. His group, the nation’s largest teacher union, argues that tax money should stay in the public schools that most need it and not be shifted to private or religious institutions.

The Senate, which has been considering the education bill--with interruptions--for six weeks, still has to hear amendments on issues ranging from school construction to a pilot program that would loosen regulations on the spending of federal funds. Still, Senate leaders said they expect to be finished with the bill by late Thursday.

The legislation’s fate then will rest with a conference committee, where Senate and House negotiators will seek to iron out differences between their versions.

Money looms as a key difference: the Senate measure calls for about $30 billion for elementary and secondary education for the next fiscal year, nearly $11 billion more than Bush has proposed.