News broke like wildfire yesterday that President Trump’s most recent fiscal 2019 federal budget submission includes in it the elimination of DCTAG.  Here’s a description of the scholarship plan by the Washington Post’s Danielle Douglas-Gabriel:

“Through the tuition program, tens of thousands of students have received $350 million to enroll at 578 colleges. Students can receive as much as $10,000 a year to attend public universities outside the city, or up to $2,500 to enroll in a private college in the D.C. metro area or at any historically black college or university across the nation.

The grants are available to all District students — except high-income families — but student advocates say the money makes the biggest difference for low-income residents. The annual family income cap has shifted in recent years; it once was $1 million but, in more recent years, has stood between $750,000 and $777,000.”

DCTAG was the brainchild of Northern Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, who believed that there were not enough high quality options for state colleges for children living in the District.  My wife and I helped Mr. David become elected to Congress in 1994, running his campaign in Reston.  The program costs the American taxpayer $40 million a year.  The Trump Administration, according to the Post’s article, made the proposal “because of a lack of a clear federal role for supporting the cost of higher education specifically for District residents.”  Ms. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel states that 26,000 students have taken advantage of the scholarships.

A school choice advocate close to the Administration explained to me yesterday that DCTAG is in no jeopardy of being shutdown.  He points to the words of U.S. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, again from the Post article:

“Norton said in a statement that the two-year budget deal reached last week preempts the White House budget, rendering it ‘dead on arrival.’ The District’s only representative in Congress said she wants to assure D.C. parents and students that she does not believe they are in danger of losing funding for the tuition assistance program.”

Interestingly, even the CATO Institute’s director of educational freedom Neal McCluskey finds the move strange. “It strikes me as an odd candidate to target for elimination,” he comments to the Post.  “Surely there are targets far more ripe for elimination.”

Mayor Bowser was incensed.  She wrote on Twitter: “#DidYouKnow that the college education of thousands of DC students is at risk? President Trump has completely eliminated the DC Tuition Assistance Grant program in his 2019 budget proposal. Urge Congress to reject Trump’s proposal. #SaveDCTAG today: http://SaveDCTAG.DC.Gov “

A petition has been started to protect the program which has been signed by D.C. Council education committee chair David Grosso, and he has encouraged others to follow his lead.  My question is why is the Councilmember so upset about DCTAG when he fought so strongly against Congressional renewal of the Opportunity Scholarship Program?

The Washington Post’s Moriah Balingit revealed on Thursday that Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mark Meadow have introduced a bill in the United States Congress called the Educational Freedom Accounts Act that would offer a private school scholarship to any child residing in the District of Columbia.  Currently, D.C. has America’s only federally funded private school voucher plan, the Opportunity Scholarship Program, but it is limited to those families living in poverty.  About 1,100 pupils currently participate in the OSP.  This legislation would permit any student in grades Kindergarten through 12 to take advantage of a private school scholarship, and depending upon family income, it would provide 80 to 90 percent of the money allocated annually to teach kids through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula.  The dollars would be deposited in individual educational savings accounts.

The timing of this news comes as an interesting coincidence.  Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the passing away from brain cancer of Joseph E. Robert, Jr.  When he was alive Mr. Robert created the Washington Scholarship Fund that awarded private school tuition for low-income children.  When the federal voucher program was enacted the same organization became the administrator.  He was a steadfast fighter for the continuation of the OSP, even in the face of eight years of effort by the Obama administration to shut it down.  Fortunately, with Serving Our Children now running the OSP, it is expected to at least triple in size.

The only problem I can see with the bill is the proposed funding level.  Ms. Balingit points out in her article that today’s per student funding is equal to about $9,500 a year.  Therefore, a middle class family with a child in the sixth grade, for example, would receive 80 percent of this amount which equals $7,500; lower than the $8,653 currently paid under the OSP.  Moreover, the existing OSP scholarship levels are already too low considering the high cost of many private schools in D.C.

But the introduction of this act is still exceedingly good news.  After more than 20 years of aggressive public school reform in the nation’s capital, student proficiency rates for reading and math stand at a dismal thirty percent.  For people living in poverty those numbers are in the 20s.  I have been making the case for a supercharging of school choice in this town to get us out of this rut.  Thankfully, Senator Cruz and Congressman Meadows have answered my call.

In light of the recent discovery that Georgetown University sold 272 slaves in order to pay off debts, this past summer six Gonzaga College High School students wanted to know if their institution had any ties to the dark history of slavery.  The connection was plausible because, as the Washington Post’s Rachel Siegel explained in an article yesterday, before it became Gonzaga, the institution was called the Washington Seminary, which was a annex of Georgetown.

So sixteen and seventeen year olds Jack Boland, Daniel Podratsky, Jack Brown, Hameed Nelson, Joe Boland, and Matthew Johnson, under the supervision of history teacher Ed Donnellan, for a couple of weeks combed Georgetown University’s Booth Family Center for Special Collections.  Their work was spurred by a November 2016 lecture that took place at Gonzaga by Adam Rothman, a Georgetown history professor and the principal curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive.  Following the talk, Mr. Donnellan asked if pupils wanted to volunteer to investigate the school’s past.  Ms. Siegel details what they discovered:

“That earlier research showed how Georgetown had profited from Jesuit-owned plantations that thrived across the region. What about our school, the Gonzaga students wondered. Did it, too, benefit from, and help sustain, the global slave trade of the 19th century?

They found their answers: Profit from those plantations was funneled to Washington Seminary, which at the time was part of Georgetown. And two slaves — Gabriel and another named Isaih — worked at the school for an unknown period of time.”

The students became fascinated by multiple references to Gabriel.  The Post continues the story:

“Multiple mentions of Gabriel being tipped small amounts appear in records kept by the seminary. And there’s a reference in a Georgetown accounts ledger that describes him as ‘a black boy from the Seminary of Washington.’

How Gabriel got to Georgetown isn’t entirely clear, though the students suspect he was brought by a family and used as counterbalance to get $1 off tuition per month. One document suggests he took the place of another slave in 1827.

Another document from a Georgetown accounts ledger notes ‘Gabe’ was sold for $450 to an unknown buyer, with a 5 percent commission going to an Edward Millard, who once attended the Washington Seminary.”

Gonzaga separated from Georgetown in 1858.  The school’s website states that as “the oldest all-boys school in Washington, DC, Gonzaga has a rich legacy that stretches back nearly 200 years. Over the course of that history, Gonzaga has demonstrated and reaffirmed a deep commitment to Jesuit education. And it has chosen to do so in the heart of the inner city—on a street shared with leaders of business and government, and on a block where it ministers to the least fortunate in society.”  The school accepts some students through Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, the school voucher plan in the District that offers tuition to private schools.

Hameed Nelson, one of the students doing the research, wonders what they can do now that they have the information about Gabriel.  Mr. Donnellan says he is thinking about building a memorial garden.

In a Washington Post editorial that appeared over the weekend, Thomas Toch and Phyllis Jordan, the leaders of the think tank FutureED, attempt to re-write the history of D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, the plan that provides private school scholarships to children living in poverty.  We must not let them.  From the piece:

“The theory behind the initiative is to give D.C.’s low-income families more and better educational opportunities by supplying them with tax dollars to send their children to private schools. Fine. But voucher enrollment in the nation’s capital dropped for four straight years, from 1,638 in the 2013-2014 school year to 1,154 in the 2016-2017 year. More striking, greater than half the new students offered vouchers last year didn’t use them.”

The decline in enrollment was a direct result of years of determined effort by the United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on behalf of President Obama to close the program.  Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous set the record straight in the Post back in 2012:

“The drop in participants is a natural outgrowth of two unforgiving scheduling decisions. First, the Education Department prevented the program’s administrator from accepting applications after an arbitrary date of March 31 of this year, shutting out anyone who came forward after that cutoff. Then, scholarship lotteries for the 2012-13 school year weren’t allowed to take place until July, far later than many parents could wait to make decisions about where their kids would attend school in the fall. Nobody at the department can give straight answers as to why.

In practical terms, what this means is that only 319 new students were offered scholarships, despite demand for many more.

These roadblocks are part of a long history of the administration’s resolute opposition to the voucher program, from Education Secretary Arne Duncan rescinding 216 scholarships in 2009 to the department ignoring the positive results of a gold-standard study, conducted by its own Institute of Education Sciences, that found that D.C. voucher students graduate at a rate of 91 percent — more than 20 percentage points higher than those who sought a voucher but either didn’t get one or didn’t enroll in the program after being accepted. Because of the delaying tactics of the department, a credible — and federally mandated — new study of the program cannot be conducted unless the program enrolls hundreds of new students next year.”

The obstacles created by the Obama Administration were enough to have Joseph E. Robert, Jr. end his Washington Scholarship Fund’s administration of the OSP back in 2009.  It was then run by the D.C. Youth and Investment Trust Corporation, a group that had no enthusiasm for the job.  In 2015, OSP management was awarded by the Department of Education to Serving Our Children.  SOC has the goal of doubling or tripling the number of scholars participating in the OSP.

Mr. Toch and Ms. Jordan state that the program costs $200 million.  I don’t know where they get their information.  The OSP takes up a minuscule part of the federal budget coming in at $15 million a year.  As part of the three-sector approach equal amounts are awarded to the traditional and charter school sectors for a total of $45 million.  You would really expect more from a think tank associated with Georgetown University.

The FutureED representatives also make a big deal about the percentage of students who elect to utilize the scholarships versus the number awarded.  Let’s just keep in mind that parents fortunately have access to a plethora of school choice in Washington, D.C.  In fact, it is estimated that 75 percent of pupils go to a school other than the one assigned by neighborhood.  We truly have a high performing educational marketplace here in the nation’s capital.

At least she is consistent.  Yesterday, the Washington Post’s Emma Brown, along with newcomer Mandy McLaren, declared that a study has found a negative impact on academic achievement for those students participating in D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program.  The report found that in reading and math for students in Kindergarten through fifth grade, the pupils on average scored significantly lower than those who had applied for a scholarship but did not receive one.  For older kids, there was no difference in reading but the math deficit remains.  The findings were produced by the U.S. Department of Education’s research unit looking at standardized test scores.  Sounds like this story should be on the newspaper’s front page.  But are you ready for this?

The study looked at results one year after these low-income scholars joined the program.

From the article, let’s see what the experts say about the results.

“Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard, said the D.C. study adds to an emerging pattern of research showing declines in student achievement among voucher recipients, a departure from an earlier wave of research — often on smaller, privately funded scholarship programs — that skewed more positive.

 ‘I think we need to be asking the question: Why is this happening and what should we make of it and should we care?’ West said. He said weaker scores among voucher recipients may be a result of the fact that public school performance is improving, particularly in the District, where math and reading scores at traditional public and public charter schools have increased quickly over the past decade.”

I know Mr. West is from Harvard, but let’s listen to local hero Kevin Chavous who actually knows what is happening on the ground.  Again, from the piece by Ms. Brown:

“”These are kids that come from some of the most challenged backgrounds, and they’re just getting adjusted. It’s no question that the longer they’re in our schools, the better they do,’ Chavous said. ‘We have to look at the ultimate judge of the quality of the program, and that’s the graduation rate and the college-going rate.’ Chavous said the voucher program gave disempowered parents something they lack in many other parts of their lives: control.”

Students from the OSP have a high school graduation rate of 92 percent, compared to a 70 percent rate citywide.  86 percent have been accepted to a two or four year college or university.

The academic achievement of those participating in the voucher program is important, but this statistic needs to be measured over time for those enrolled in private schools.  If for some reason it is found that students are not learning at an acceptable rate, then the program will be improved to make this goal a reality.

The Washington Post’s Emma Brown revealed that the new group administering the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Serving Our Children, announced last Friday that it expects the private school voucher plan available to low-income students to grow next school year by “hundreds of new students.”  The timing of the news was perfect as it came on February 24th, which is the birthday of Joseph E. Robert, Jr., the man who when he was alive championed the OSP as a civil right and whose group, The Washington Scholarship Fund, successfully managed it for years.

Ms. Brown states that “Kevin Mills, manager of family and community affairs for Serving Our Children, said in a telephone interview that the organization is expecting to expand because of new federal resources. He declined to say how much additional money the organization is expecting to receive, saying that they won’t have a firm number for another week or two.”

An inside source tells me that the resources to which Mr. Mills is referring come from the rollover funds that are sitting unspent from eight years of the Obama Administration’s efforts to restrict the number of kids that could participate.  Congress allocates $15 million a year for the vouchers in addition to equal amounts going to D.C.’s traditional schools and charters as part of the Three Sector Approach that Mr. Roberts utilized to get the original legislation passed and signed by President George W. Bush.  Approximately 1,100 scholars are currently enrolled in the OSP,  however with an estimated $20 million in surplus money  obviously many more pupils could certainly be helped.

The time is finally right for such a move with Donald Trump in the White House and Betsy DeVos as the U.S. Secretary of Education.  Also on the agenda is the five year re-authorization of the OSP, something Speaker Paul Ryan failed to do at the end of 2015.

School choice advocates such as myself are hoping that at long last the tide has finally turned regarding the continuation and expansion of this life preserver for families living in poverty.

Last Thursday I attended a fascinating program hosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute around the release of a report by the American Federation of Children entitled, “Private School Choice: How Do Programs Nationwide Stack Up?”  The forum’s facilitator was Michael Petrilli, president of the Fordham Institute. Whitney Marcavage, AFC policy director, took the audience through the study.  She explained that as of July of this year there are an astonishing 400,000 pupils across 25 states and the District of Columbia enrolled in 50 private school school programs.  Her organization only included those that “give parents enough assistance to actually make a different educational choice” and “provide parents with a variety of private school options, including religious schools.”

The breakdown of private school choice programs is as follows:  23 are vouchers like the one that operates here in the nation’s capital, 20 are classified as scholarship tax credits, five count as Educational Savings Accounts, and two were defined as individual tuition tax credit plans.

The programs were then ranked on a point system against the criteria of “broad eligibility for participation,” “high scholarship amounts and enrollment growth,” and “transparency and accountability.”

To end the suspense the private school choice program in the United States that scored highest against these three measures was Florida’s tax credit scholarship.  The Opportunity Scholarship Program in D.C. was tied for 13, marked down for the restrictive income limits for participation, the total dollar amount of the vouchers compared to the allocation for each pupil contained in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, and for the number of children enrolled.

The most interesting part of the presentation for me was the panel discussion.  Joining Mr. Petrilli and Ms. Marcavage on stage were Robert Behning, an Indiana State Representative; Max Eden, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; and Derrell Bradford, vice president of 50CAN.  Mr. Behning’s remarks caught my attention.

The Choice Scholarship Program in his state qualified as the number 1 voucher program in this country according to the AFC study.  Mr. Behning explained that there are a couple of reasons for the success of the plan.  First, the Representative detailed that a sizable number of families in his state qualify for the voucher, on a sliding scale, because of the relatively high income limit.  The large participation rate generates broad support for the scholarships.  Mr. Behning argued that voucher programs such as the OSP actually work against political backing because they are are targeted toward helping kids living in poverty, a population that often has the least influence at a public policy level.  This line of reasoning makes a lot of sense.

In D.C. in order to increase support for the OSP we created the Three-Sector approach.  This means that the funds appropriated by Congress for the vouchers also include equal amounts for traditional and charter schools.  But another way to reach the same point or even to drive up  community enthusiasm for the program could be to up the total number of children that qualify due to earnings.

Mr. Behning related that another component of vouchers in Indiana that has the effect of diminishing political opposition is that the scholarship level is set at 90 percent of the school system’s per pupil revenue. This means in practice that any child that receives a voucher lowers the amount of money being spent on education, providing the state’s representatives another 10 percent to allocate to other priorities.

The event provided much to consider regarding school choice in this country.

Thursday of last week a reconstituted SOAR Act, the legislation that contains within it the Opportunity Scholarship Program, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.  This is the second time in about six months that the bill that provides private school vouchers for children living in poverty has received an affirmative vote.

This is a prelude to getting the plan through the Senate and signed by the President.  This didn’t work out well towards the end of 2015 when it appeared that the retirement of Speaker Boenhner left school choice advocates flatfooted and unprepared with how to deal with strong Democratic Party opposition led by Congresswoman Pelosi.

Fortunately, there has been much work done since that go-around.  Solid support for a five year re-authorization has been expressed by the D.C. Mayor, the Chairman of the D.C. Council, eight of his fellow Council members, and in a really bizarre change-of-heart, D.C.’s non-voting Congressional Representative.  But none of this should be anywhere near this hard.

The OSP simply grants scholarships to poor families to enroll their kids in the same type of school that President Obama’s daughters attend.  There are many fine institutions that accept the vouchers such as Sidwell Friends, where Malia and Sasha go, the St. Peters School, Archbishop Carroll High School, and Gonzaga College High School.  A couple of years ago I interviewed the principal of St. Peters whose scholars at the time were completing a Student Families project through Catholic Charities.  The activity, which assembles breakfast meals for temporarily homeless individuals, is named after Joseph E. Robert, Jr., the man who when he was alive championed the OSP through the Three-Sector Approach that provides an equal amount of federal funding for DCPS, charters, and the private school vouchers.  At the time about 10 OSP students were at St. Peters.

The total cost of the plan is $45 million a year.

If providing a life-line to the most vulnerable among us is this hard, we really have to wonder what is being taught in our public schools.