Senate Approves Landmark School Voucher Plan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved the country's first federally funded educational voucher scheme, which will enable some poor public school students in Washington D.C. to attend private schools.

The controversial voucher plan, so-called because it gives the families of around 2,000 eligible Washington students vouchers worth up to $7,500 each for private school tuition, was part of a delayed 2004 budget bill that passed 65-28.

President Bush backs the idea but it is strongly opposed by many Democrats who say it will undermine public schools and is unfair to students left behind. Local civic leaders and parents in Washington are divided over the issue.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4189070

The beginning of the end...underfund schools, keep 'em dumb, feed the hungry war machine...

eom

"...we'll still find your little pretties", Rumsfeld cackled and rubbed his hands together.

$7500 would give them quite an education!

If only they would gives us the money , since I have been home schooling five years. I don't think we will ever get anything, they continually try to fin more ways to regulate us. They are now talking about having each parent have a background check before they can home school! Unbelievable!

Which state is that?

I live in Virginia. We have to report twice a year, in August we send notice of intent to home school and our curriculum we plan to use, in June of the following year we have to send proof of advancement (a test score). We are considered a moderate state to home school.
My oldest son attended school four years. It was not good, I did not send my younger son at all.

I just moved from Virginia and I'm pretty familiar with their homeschooling laws. You DON'T need to follow all of those rules if you are homeschooling because of your religious beliefs. And there is no legal requirement that a religion or religious belief meet organizational or doctrinal tests in order to qualify for the exemption.

Of course... unless you are already a certified teacher in Virginia and qualified to judge the educational level of your most important student, I'm sure you WANT at least an annual check-up on whether YOU are actually teaching him anything?

A friend homeschools, and the govt. keeps them on the straight and narrow with regulation. It's hardly the cakewalk people think it is.

Good for you. You just might have the best idea around, if this kind of crap keeps up.

Just like everything else regarding education in this administration: if it don't affect a Congressman's kid, the sky's the limit.

homeowners pay property taxes that fund public education, not private education and not homeschooling. Homeowners benefit when public schools do well as people flock to the area and drive up their property values. It's a benefit to the tax payer that they perform their civic duty of providing a public education. They have no obligation to fund someone's private or homeschooling education. You can do that on your own dime.

Private and homeschooling do nothing to increase the value of homeowners property.

You seem to be saying that we have an 'obligation' to send our kids to failing schools in the hopes that one day, somehow, these schools will recover and increase area property values. I won't do it.

And I refuse to sacrafice my kids in a failing system for the purpose of one day saving the system.

Especially since we only spend about $1500 a year educating our two children and that includes tuition for our umbrella school, books, field trips and supplies. The Library and the internet are so inexpensive and yet they provide some of the best resources for learning-- go figure!

However, I don't want any money from the government or anyone else to educate my children. When the government gives you money there is usually some string attached to it.

to two of my conservative friends that the poor family down the street, (the minority family with five kids), would be grateful for school vouchers. They did some quick math and suddenly became anti-voucher and pro-public schools.

Say a poor family has 5 kids, and Mom works minimum wage jobs, and collects assistance.. She "could" stay home and teach the kids herself... She'd be getting $37,500.00 a year, and it's probably tax free too (haven't read the whole thing yet)..

There is nothing to prevent the "storefront" schools from cashing in bigtime either..

But if I'm not mistaken, aren't private schools excluded from the No Child Left Behind advancement tests?

Thought I read that in "Bushwhacked", but I don't have it handy.

since I am an atheist. I believe this will be a poor policy and is not the right thing to do for all citizens of the country. It will single out certain children and it will have little oversight.

I think this is a very bad idea . Purposefully underfunding the public schools system began it's downfall. I object to this strongly--I object to a Catholic crucifix hanging in the front of every classroom when I am paying the rent.

screwing the citizenry today? I sure hope those jokers aren't anticipating collecting overtime tonight.

schools in ANY big city?

The waiting lists for privates are years long. When we applied for a spot in our school, there were 600 applicants for 4 -- yes F O U R spaces in kindergarten. The space availability DECREASES as the grades get higher.

think there are 2000 spaces available?

http://dc.about.com/cs/privateschools/index.htm

students educated at private schools through vouchers over the 12 years of the program. Private schools, mostly parochial Catholic schools, need the money.

you have?

The thing about school vouchers is that it diverts money away from the public schools.

away from their communities and directly effects their property values. This is a rip off to the tax paying homeowner.

they will be forever endebted to the government.

This is not a good idea for the constitutional protections and for the country, but I sense that religions such as the Catholic religion and it's private schools, which can no longer fund themselves because they overextended and built huge cathedrals that cannot be supported any longer by the members of the church, are drooling at the prospect of tax payer, government welfare money supporting their religion. Further, there will be no oversight on them from the government. Who could ask for anything more?

Does anyone else but me find that funny and sad at the same time?

This is disgusting to me. The church's , especially the
catholic church (which has about 80% of the private schools in the land,) hands are exteneded to get the money they need from the tax payers, ALL the tax payers all over the country, but they will refuse and attempt to sway political laws to coincide with their beliefs, such as abortion, when they are on the "dole" from all the tax payers, women included who do not think or believe the same as the Catholics re abortion or birth control for that matter.

This is the irony.

We the tax payers, whether Catholic or not, will pay for Catholic schools to tell and to teach children that atheists are bad very bad, possibly evil, commie infiltrators, and that the Catholic religion is the "only one true religion"

while it accepts money from all sorts of people who are NOT Catholics and do NOT believe in those precepts in order to keep it's private schools viable, complete with the crucifix in every classroom

. I have no children in the schools and no grandchildren in the schools.

Why should I pay for this private Catholic school to teach religion?

I want a voucher that will allow me to take that money which Bush and congess would give to the Catholic schools, to take to my local pharmacist for payment for a drug that will help me cope with my diabetes. Why should I pay for little failed geniuses who could not make it in the public schools to go to the Catholic school on my money and be declared the geniuses everyone always knew they were, especially the parents.

That they faild in the public school was because the "teacher" was no good or for some other disturbing reason. She or he faile to recognize and protect the genius the parents saw in thier own child.

Corrupt--religion that is desperate for money because it has lost it's contributing members, is whoring to the government for it's support. Those huge cathedral like churches cost an awful lot to heat during the winter, for only a couple of hours a week of occupation by the flock. The rest of the time it sits fallow, looking magnificient.

It will now do anything and say anything that the government tells it to--if not, it may lose it's tax payer faith based support(welfare) money. Now the government has the church by the balls when it distributes tax money to it. That is the rub that parents anxious for thier kids to get out of the public school so that they excell under a different situation, need to recognize.

And the schools and those public school failures attending? Geniuses all. ;-)

They were not geniuses in the public school system--because the teacher did not recognize them as geniuses even though the parents did!!

-so pull em out of that school and away from all of those annoying "others" whose parents do not "care" and who do not have the time to read to their kids as do the parent in the higher imcome brackett who are convinced that their child is a genius whose intellect is NOT be developed as it should because of the "teacher" and because of the others the little child genius is forced to put up with in a public school classroom, and who put a damper on the kid's "genius" .

Better to take the tax payer money and get the kid into a school where mostly all think alike--at least in matters concerning religion (and politics as we have seen it being ever the more so involved, and with the vouchers even more so involved)

and that is very important for establishing the pecking order and for getting contol over the flock and it's little lambkins.

Running the Catholic school on tax payer money and running the church on tax payer money--well look-it's the kids. The parents want to push all that is the best for their kids. If it means taking advantage of others not of the same religion to teach their kids a religion is immaterial and irrelevant. The important thing is that a parent does the best they can for their child--and that means getting them into a private school away from all the "others" and the bonus under Bush is that the tax payer will pay for their little genius to learn a religion that villifies others and establishes an elitism above others.

and the ones that are available to grade school children are as follows:

Capitol Hill Day School
Application Fee: $500
Security Deposit: $1000 (this is odd...security deposit??)
Pre-K & Kindergarten: $14,450
Grades 1st - 5th: $15,940
Grades 6th - 8th: $16,750


Archbishop Carroll High School
$6000 or $6250 for non-Catholics, except this is a high school.


Squaw Valley Academy
Grades 6th - 12th: $9810

So, from that list, parents will still have to come up with quite a bit of money.

The other schools were either all boy schools or upper grades.

So, if you have a crappy grade school education, what are the chances you'll pass the admissions test for the upper grades??

I hope there are more affordable choices than just this site.

might as well give it to the upper class folks whose kids are already in those schools. I'd hate to see that money just going to waste.

Just like when Tom Delay wanted to go to Nam, but the minorities took all the combat spots, so he couldn't.

no schools to GO to.

Any of the presidential candidates? Any of them who voted for it will nto be getting my vote. Every day it becomes harder to remain in this pathetic party. Roosevelt and Kennedy would be disgusted...

candidates voted on this either time.

print....dems made sure it was experimental temp and limited to only 2,000 DC students!...thank God they were able to put that in or else the repukes were pushing for it to national....dems did a good job limiting it to 2,000 students