Outgoing Speaker John Boehner loves funneling money for DC's public schools into parochial schools and other private schools.
Today, House Republicans demonstrated that they share that love for draining the public sphere of funds, too, by reauthorizing DC's school voucher program.
Here is what the deceptively titled Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act would do:
H.R. 10 would reauthorize the District of Columbia private school voucher program, the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), for five years through 2021. In 2004, Congress established OSP, the first and only federally created or funded elementary and secondary private school voucher program in the United States. In 2011, Congress reauthorized OSP through fiscal year 2016 in the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act (SOAR Act), that vote can be found here. Under the SOAR Act, D.C. households with incomes that do not exceed 185% of the poverty line may receive an annual maximum voucher payment per student of $8,000 for grades K-8 and $12,000 for grades 9-12.
In addition, H.R. 10 makes a significant change to the evaluation of OSP’s effectiveness. The bill prohibits a control study group in making evaluations of the OSP and requires a less rigorous “quasi-experimental research design” than under the SOAR Act. Since 2004, almost $190 million has been spent on D.C. voucher schools. That is money that could have been spent on District public schools, which serve all students.
It passed
240 to 191.
Two Democrats joined Republicans in voting for it: John Delaney (MD-06) and Dan Lipinski (IL-03).
Eight Republicans joined Democrats in voting against it:
Mike Bost (IL-12)
Ryan Costello (PA-06)
Bob Dold (IL-10)
Sam Graves (MO-06)
Morgan Griffith (VA-09)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02)
David Reichert (WA-08)
Mike Simpson (ID-02)