Americans United for Separation of Church and State has posted an urgent Action Alert this morning:
URGENT: Senate to Vote on School Vouchers TODAY
Tell your Senator to vote NO on Lieberman voucher amendment
Today, Senator Lieberman (I-CT) is planning to introduce an amendment on the Senate floor that would expand and extend the failed DC school voucher program. The Senate has rejected his attempts thus far, but we need your help to be sure they do so again today!
Yep, pious Joe is pushing his conservative agenda. More below.
After sneaking through the congressional authorization process as a controversial pilot program almost 6 years ago, the DC voucher program has failed to meet its goals. Rather than providing for increased educational opportunity for the District's neediest students, the program has resulted in no significant gains for the students for whom the program is intended. Unsurprisingly, vouchers are an ineffective solution and a drain on the public school system, and it's now time to stop this taxpayer-funded program before the reach of vouchers expands further.
Public school opponents are using this as a test case. Those who believe that your tax dollars should be spent on private and parochial school tuition would love to extend the voucher program in DC, and then spread federally funded school vouchers throughout the rest of the country. Vouchers do not work - and the DC program is no exception. Students from Schools In Need of Improvement, the target population for the program, have shown no significant improvement in their voucher schools. The program is a failure and an unwise use of taxpayer dollars. With the current state of our national economy, it is imperative that we only fund programs that actually work. We need to prepare our students for the future by funding evidence-based methods of raising student achievement - not vouchers.
Please urge your Senator to take a stand against vouchers and vote NO on Lieberman Amendment to HR 4213.
The bill that Joe is seeking to amend is the Tax Extenders Act of 2009. It's already passed the House. As you can read on the linked page there are a number of tax provisions in this bill, but there is nothing in the bill as passed by the House pertaining to education or vouchers. This is simply Joe sneaking in vouchers to support religious private schools in D.C., where of course Congress makes laws for the District.
This is not just a local issue, and while it is very much an issue of the separation of church and state, this goes well beyond that. This is potentially precedent setting. Strong public education is vital for our democracy. The same forces that want to promote ignorance and susceptibility to being manipulated by fear, misinformation and wedge issues to be able to convince Americans to vote against their economic self interest love the concept of destroying strong public education, and vouchers for private and parochial schools are the major weapon to accomplish that.
It would be one thing if vouchers worked to improve education for everyone, but the evidence is now clear that they don't help the people who receive them, and they dramatically further weaken and erode our already deteriorating public school system. An excellent article in the Washington Monthly on school vouchers starts off with the title, "An Idea Whose Time Has Gone".
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, adds, "The D.C. voucher experiment has been an abject failure. It has fallen far short of its goals for boosting achievement among the targeted population. It also forces taxpayers to support religious schools against their will and draws attention away from legitimate public education reforms."
Americans United does excellent work. Thanks for any help on spreading the word on this Action Alert. You can send a message directly from the Action Alert page.