GaryP

From the<a href="http://www.aclu.org/action/dcvouchers107.html" target="_blank">ACLU</a>

Excerpt;

Specifically, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) has introduced the "District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship Act," HR 5033. This troubling legislation would divert $45 million in public funds over five years to fund transportation, tuition and fees at private and religious schools in the District of Columbia.

The first of many voucher fights, I fear.

Buffman

What's wrong with teaching children about the God to whom they Pledge Allegiance? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Orestes

And they couldnt take that $45 million and use it to improve the public schools? /sigh

4th Generation Atheist

DC politics is awfully scary where the schools are concerned. There are absically two DC populations: one transient, well-heeled and overwhelmingly white. These people, whose jobs usually relate to a specific governemental personage or who are here attend a university, usually, if they have any children, are able to duck the DC public school system by shelling out for private school or moving to the burbs. The second population is permanent, poorer and overwhelmingly Black or immigrant; if they live in DC, the situation for their children is (predictably) graver. The public school system is so strapped for funds that a couple of years ago the start of classes was delayed for several weeks because the roofs of several buildings had not been properly repaired over the summer. The classic inner-city problems of overcrowding, violence and insufficient supplies plague these schools. Charter schools have been in existence for quite some time now, but it can be very hard to get one's kid into one, and the quality situation is sometimes not that much better. This is why so many Black failies in this area support "school choice"; they see that white families with college-bound kids can bail-out, and look at their own kids who have promise and want to bail-out too. Hence the thorny issue.

What it does come down to is money; and the critics of these voucher programs are right, it takes money away from those kids who are still stuck in the public schools. The big cheat is that most of the vouchers don't provide enough to pay for the "quality education" type of public school the parents are hoping for. The secular objection is rarely quoted around here; demographically, the "voucher" population here is pretty religious.