By Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director, AASA
The VOUCHER Fight Of 2018: Are You Weighing In?
It’s no secret the
Trump/DeVos Administration favors efforts to privatize federal education dollars. With the help
of a Republican-controlled Congress, they have eked out a few wins this session
that furthers the pro-voucher agenda.
First, in the FY17 Omnibus
last year, voucher proponents were successful in getting the only federally-funded
voucher program—the DC voucher program—reauthorized for 5 years despite a
widely publicized study conducted by the U.S. Dept. of Education that found
D.C. students using vouchers to attend private schools were performing worse
than their public school counterparts in math and reading.
Second, during the tax
reform debate in Congress, voucher advocates received support for a change to
529 college savings accounts that permits taxpayers in some states to use these
tax-free accounts to set aside $10,000 in K-12 private school expenses as well.
However, as soon as the ink
dried on tax reform, AASA began fighting the most significant of battles that
threaten public education dollars this Congress. Working closely with our
friends at the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS) and
many other education, civil rights, disability rights, religious and secular
groups that belong to the National Coalition for Public Education (which AASA
co-chairs), we honed in on a new voucher proposal that would allow active duty
military families living on military bases to obtain a $2,500 (or in some
exceptional cases a $4,500) voucher that they could use for private school,
homeschool, virtual school, summer camp, tutoring and therapies, or college
savings.
The scheme was flexible and
straightforward: As long as an active-duty military family would not send their
child to a public school full-time they could receive a small but very flexible
voucher known as an “education savings account.” How would these vouchers be
subsidized? Only through the oldest, most respected and most bipartisan funding
stream at the federal level: Impact Aid.
Impact Aid was designed to direct federal
dollars to districts who lack tax revenue due to the presence of federal land
(forests, military bases/depots, Indian reservations, etc). It was never meant
to be doled out on a per-pupil basis and it was never meant to be used solely to
support military-connected kids. However, the Heritage Foundation, the most
powerful conservative organization in the country along with their friends like
ALEC, EdChoice, The American Federation of Children, The Club for Growth, and
about 20 other heavy-hitting conservative pro-voucher organizations decided this
was the education fight for 2018 and
they proposed legislation called, “The Military Education Savings Account” (HR
5199/S.2517).
To up the ante to get the
bill passed, Heritage took the unusual step of adding co-sponsorship of the
bill to its political scorecard—which means a Republican hoping to be in
Heritage’s good policy and funding graces during this election cycle would lose
points even if they failed to co-sponsor (little less vote for) the bill. To
date, there are more than 60 Republicans in the House who are signed on as
co-sponsors. That’s 1 out of every 4 Republicans in the House.
The good news? We’ve already won round 1 in the
fight. Despite having considerably fewer resources to go toe-to-toe with these
well-funded political organizations, the education community (helped
considerably by allies in the military community that we engaged) has succeeded
in making Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee uncomfortable enough with this specific
proposal that the Committee vote planned for May 9th on the bill
will not come up for a vote. While we may have won the first battle to
protect Impact Aid funding from vouchers the war is far from over.
Because they were denied a
vote in Committee, Heritage and its allies need to rally enough votes to pass
this on the floor of the House. The week of May 21st is when the
House will be considering this bill as an amendment to the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA). NDAA is a must-pass bill to fund the Department of
Defense every year. The Senate Armed Services Committee will also be
considering this bill as part of their mark-up of NDAA.
If you haven’t weighed in
yet with House or Senate representatives—please do! YOUR voice makes a
difference in debate. After personally attending dozens of meetings with House
staff over the past three months about the Impact Aid voucher bill, I was
repeatedly heartened to hear that they had already heard from school leaders
who expressed “strong concerns” with this proposal and that your voices were making
a meaningful difference in how Congressional offices viewed the bill.
The takeaway for school
leaders: It doesn’t matter the opponent—your voice matters.
You are a highly-respected
constituent and all the money and political pressure from the other side
doesn’t always equate to victory. Keep weighing in. We must stop this new
federal education voucher scheme from coming to fruition.