Tom Toch on Voucher Redux

Tom Toch, senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, writes in this month's Kappan, on the resurgence of school vouchers. Toch says that the 2010 elections led to a flurry of new voucher initiatives, but that there’s little to recommend vouchers as a large-scale reform strategy.

When House Republicans cut a trillion-dollar budget deal with Senate Democrats and the White House last spring, Speaker of the House John Boehner demanded a couple of pot sweeteners. One was relaunching the D.C. Opportunity Scolarship Program that gave low-income District of Columbia residents federal vouchers to pay tuition at the city’s private and parochial schools. Established by Congress in 2004 under Republican
leadership, the program was defunded five years later, with Democrats in control of Capitol Hill and teacher unions pushing the Obama Administration to shutter the program.

Boehner got the money he wanted for D.C. — nearly $120 million over six years — and his victory has helped fuel a resurgence of the school voucher movement following last year’s elections, which brought pro-voucher Republicans to power in the House and many states.

You can read the entire commentary here.