[Senate Hearing 114-525]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-525
THE VALUE OF EDUCATION CHOICES FOR
LOW INCOME FAMILIES: REAUTHORIZING THE D.C. OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP
PROGRAM
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
__________
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
RAND PAUL, Kentucky JON TESTER, Montana
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
JONI ERNST, Iowa GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
BEN SASSE, Nebraska
Keith B. Ashdown, Staff Director
Courtney J. Allen, Counsel
Patrick J. Bailey, Chief Counsel for Governmental Affairs
Gabrielle A. Batkin, Minority Staff Director
John P. Kilvington, Minority Deputy Staff Director
Michael Santora, Legislative Assistant, Office of Senator Carper
Laura W. Kilbride, Chief Clerk
Benjamin C. Grazda, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Johnson.............................................. 1
Senator Carper............................................... 3
Senator Booker............................................... 27
Senator Heitkamp............................................. 30
Prepared statements:
Senator Johnson.............................................. 43
Senator Carper............................................... 45
WITNESS
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Hon. Dianne Feinstein, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 5
Hon. Tim Scott, a U.S. Senator from the State of South Carolina.. 6
Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Representative in Congress from the
District of Columbia........................................... 8
Hon. Kevin P. Chavous, Chairman, Serving Our Children,
Washington, D.C................................................ 12
Mary Elizabeth Blaufuss, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Archbishop Carroll High School, Washington, D.C................ 15
Gary Jones, Parent, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,
Washington, D.C................................................ 17
Linda Cruz Catalan, Student, The Field School, Washington, D.C... 19
Christopher A. Lubienski, Ph.D., Professor, Education Policy,
Organization and Leadership, University of Illinois, Champaign,
Illinois....................................................... 20
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Blaufuss, Mary Elizabeth:
Testimony.................................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 53
Chavous, Hon. Kevin P.:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 49
Cruz Catalan, Linda:
Testimony.................................................... 19
Prepared statement........................................... 62
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Holmes Norton, Hon. Eleanor:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 47
Jones, Gary:
Testimony.................................................... 17
Prepared statement........................................... 60
Lubienski, Christopher A.:
Testimony.................................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 64
Scott, Hon. Tim:
Testimony.................................................... 6
APPENDIX
Statements submitted for the Record from:
American Association of University Women..................... 75
American Civil Liberties Union............................... 77
Baptist Joint Committee...................................... 80
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc............... 81
Government Accountability Office............................. 82
National Coalition for Public Education...................... 93
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America............ 97
Secular Coalition for America................................ 98
Dr. Patrick Wolf, Distinguished Professor of Education
Policy, University of Arkansas............................. 101
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record from:
Mr. Chavous.................................................. 115
Ms. Blaufuss................................................. 121
Mr. Lubienski................................................ 123
THE VALUE OF EDUCATION CHOICES FOR
LOW-INCOME FAMILIES: REAUTHORIZING
THE D.C. OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Johnson, Sasse, Carper, Heitkamp, and
Booker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. This hearing will come to
order.
I want to welcome everybody here. We have a distinguished
first panel. I certainly want to welcome the students and
teachers and administrators from Cornerstone Academy, Calvary
Christian Academy, and Archbishop Carroll High School. All of
these schools participate in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
Program (OSP). So, we really do appreciate having a full
hearing room, and I am really looking forward to the testimony.
I would ask unanimous consent to have my formal opening
statement included in the record\1\ and I just want to keep my
opening comments relatively short, but also just off the top of
my head.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Johnson appears in the
Appendix on page 43
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I became involved and a strong supporter of school choice
many years before I ran for the U.S. Senate. I got involved in
the local school system. As a Missouri Synod Lutheran, we sent
our kids to a Catholic school system in Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
which struggled. It is very difficult for private schools to
survive when the parents are obviously paying property taxes.
We all want to do that to support public schools. But then have
to also pay private tuition for the schools.
I come from the private sector. I ran a plastics
manufacturing business for 31 years. I would have loved to have
been a monopoly. I did not really like competition. But because
of free market competition, my prices were lower, my quality
was higher, as was my customer service. That is what free
market competition does. It guarantees the lowest possible
price and cost, the best possible quality, the best possible
level of customer service.
Gee, would it not be great to have that kind of discipline
in our school system for our children, for their opportunities?
So, I am just naturally inclined to support competition and
opportunities, because this is all about providing our children
with the tools they need to become productive citizens. It is
about opportunity. It is about giving people a choice. It is
about giving people a chance.
I want to just quickly run through some numbers.
Fortunately, in the State of Wisconsin, we were some real
trailblazers here. With the efforts of people like Polly
Williams and other courageous people in Wisconsin, we have had
a school choice program offering for quite a few years. To
date, more than 290,000 students in Wisconsin have been able to
participate in that type of opportunity. On an annual basis, it
is about 30,000 out of a total enrollment in Wisconsin of about
863,000, but it is primarily in Milwaukee, where we have
enrollment of 77,000 students. Twenty-five thousand are taking
advantage of the Opportunity Scholarships in Wisconsin. In
D.C., it is about 85,000 children enrolled in K through 12.
Only 1,400 have that possibility.
As a business person, as an accountant, one of the things I
just have to take a look at is I have to take a look at costs.
In Milwaukee--in Wisconsin, it costs, on average, about $12,000
per year to educate a child. Now, again, as a business person,
if I take $12,000, let us say times 20 students, that is
$240,000. I think if you give me 20 students and $240,000, I
would do a pretty good job of educating those 20 kids. Now, I
realize it is more complex than that and there are some real
challenges.
In the District of Columbia, it costs about $28,000 per
student. That includes building costs. If you pull the building
costs out of that, it is close to $20,000. Now, do the math on
that. Twenty-thousand or $28,000 times 20 is somewhere between
$400,000 to $569,000 per 20 pupils. A lot of times, we do not
really kind of put it in those terms, but literally $400,000 to
over $500,000 per 20 students, a classroom. Again, you give me
$400,000 to $550,000 to educate 20 kids, I would do a pretty
good job.
Now, it is also a fact that these Opportunity Scholarships
cost dramatically less than that. In the District of Columbia,
depending on which figure you are looking at, it is somewhere
between 44 percent of the full cost or 63 percent of the just
spending on students--44 to 63 percent. And you could make a
strong case for Opportunity Scholarships just on the basis of
saving the school district money.
So, you put the numbers, you put all those things aside,
the bottom line is this is about providing opportunity to our
children so that they can, again, obtain the tools to lead a
successful life. Opportunity should not be determined by
winning a lottery.
Anybody who has seen the movie, ``Waiting for Superman,''
and it is a hard movie to watch, as we see some kids winning
the
lottery, getting a shot at a productive life, and other
children losing--it should not be like that, not here in
America, not in the District of Columbia.
So, again, I just really want to commend Senator Feinstein
and Senator Scott and other people that have really worked hard
on this issue for many years, to provide that opportunity to
our children.
And with that, I will turn it over to Senator Tom Carper
for his opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding
the hearing today, and to our witnesses, three of my favorite
people are lined up here before us, Senator Feinstein, Senator
Scott, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. It is great to see
you, Eleanor. Thank you so much for coming over here to join
us.
Before I came to work here with all of you, I had the
privilege of being a Governor in my State. For 8 years, we
focused on raising student achievement, thought it was the most
important thing that we did. We focused on--it was part of the
idea of how do we, one, strengthen the basic building block of
our society, our families, and we thought that was pretty
important, education. The other thing is we are always focused
on how to provide a nurturing environment for job creation and
job preservation, and if you do not have a world class
workforce, kids coming out of our high schools who can read,
who can write, who can think, who can do math, who are good
with science and technology, then you have a problem in this
day and age. So, we focused on all of that.
We measured our progress, or lack of progress, and
recently, a couple of years ago, I think, Stanford and Harvard
actually did a study of all 50 States. They looked at academic
progress from 1993, the year I became Governor, through 2003,
and they found that some States did pretty well in terms of
academic progress. Delaware is No. 3 out of 50 in terms of our
progress. So, we had a long ways to go to start with. We
started in a hole and we made progress.
We still struggle. I will be real honest with you. We still
struggle to try to make sure that every kid has a chance to
learn and does learn and goes on to graduate. I am pleased with
our graduation rates in our State. I think we are up, way up,
from where we were just a couple of years ago, but there is
still more work to be done.
The important thing for us in Delaware is to find out what
works, and I think the best predictor of kids doing well in
school is the expectation and the involvement of their parents.
If you have a kid who is being raised by someone who does not
care about their education, not involved with their child's
education, or their grandchild's education, or the niece or
nephew's education, do not be surprised when great things do
not happen. If you do not have teachers, if you do not have
great school leadership, do not be surprised if wonderful
things do not happen in those schools, because those are
incredibly important, as well.
This is a program that would not exist but for, I think,
John Boehner, Speaker Boehner, a good friend of mine, I suspect
of all of ours. For him, this is real important. This is a big
legacy for him. We all have legacy issues that we have worked
on. Senator Feinstein and us and our Committee have worked real
hard of late on information sharing/cybersecurity legislation,
and that is going to be part of your legacy and, hopefully,
part of ours and help us strengthen our economic recovery in
this country and do other good things, as well. But, this is
important to John Boehner. And, that is not why I think we
should support the program, but I think it means we have an
obligation to make sure that it is as good as it can be.
There are critics of this program. I am not going to spend
the time going through the criticisms of the program. But, it
is important that we have good metrics for the program, we find
out what is working and what is not, and the stuff, the areas
where it is not working, let us do something about it. There
are some schools where this program helps to fund that I do not
think any of
us--look, I would say, why would we do that with Federal money?
So, let us just be open minded about this.
I will close with this thought. Among the other Committees
I serve on with Senator Scott is the Finance Committee, and
about 2 years ago, we had a hearing on deficit reduction and
had some really smart people there to talk to us about deficit
reduction to our Finance Committee. One of the guys was Alan
Blinder. Alan Blinder now teaches economics at Princeton. He
used to be Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve when Alan
Greenspan was our Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
So, Alan Blinder was testifying before us and he said on
deficit reduction, the 800-pound gorilla in the room on deficit
reduction is reducing health care costs, getting better costs
and reducing health care costs at the same time, and he was
right. When it came time for us to ask questions of our
witnesses that day, I asked him, I said, Dr. Blinder, you said
the 800-pound gorilla in the room on deficit reduction is
health care costs. If we do not get our arms around it, we are
doomed. And, he said, ``That is right.'' I said, just tell us,
if you were in our shoes, what would you do about it? And he
sat there, and he sat there, and finally he said, ``Find out
what works, do more of that.'' That is all he said. ``Find out
what works and do more of that.''
In Delaware, we did not go to the kind of system we have in
this program that we are talking about here, but we did go to
charter schools, public charter schools. Next October, or next
September when schools convene in Wilmington, Delaware, half of
the kids in Wilmington, Delaware, public schools, will be going
to a charter school. If they do not work, we close them. If
they do work, we try and replicate them and figure out what we
can do.
We have public school choice in Delaware. You can choose to
move from school to school within your district. You can even
go outside your district. The money follows the kid, to foster
competition, the kind of competition that our Chairman was
talking about.
So, could competition help us? Sure, it can. But it is
important that whether it is a charter school or traditional
public school or a voucher program like this one, we have to be
using good metrics and always looking for how do we make this
better. How do we make sure that we are getting our money's
worth for our taxpayers and doing what is fair for the kids and
their families.
With that, I will ask my real statement be made part of the
record and we will move on.\1\ Thank you all for joining us.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Carper appears in the
Appendix on page 45.
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Chairman Johnson. Senator Carper did mention the
cybersecurity bill. This is another example of what can be
accomplished when you concentrate on the areas of agreement
that unite us, that unify us, as opposed to exploit our
differences.
So, again, I want to welcome our distinguished panel. We
have Senator Dianne Feinstein, the senior Senator from the
State of California; Senator Tim Scott, the junior Senator from
the State of South Carolina; and Delegate Eleanor Holmes
Norton, Delegate to the U.S. Congress representing the District
of Columbia.
We will start with Senator Feinstein, and we realize you
are going to have to leave after your testimony, but we really
do appreciate you taking time. Senator Feinstein.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A UNITED STATES
SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thanks. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman,
and thank you, Senator Carper, for your comments. Senator
Sasse, great to have you here. I also want to thank Senator
Scott and Senator Booker for their support of this program. And
it is great to see Eleanor Holmes Norton, a woman I greatly
admire, and I welcome her to the lesser side of the Congress.
[Laughter.]
My history with this program goes back to 2003. As an
appropriator, the first appropriation was thought to be a tie
vote. I received a visit from Mayor Williams, and he made a
pitch to me for the program and I voted for the program, and it
was a tie vote and I broke that tie. So, I have taken great
interest in the program since then and watched it and hope to
see it continue to mature.
I really believe that we have to, as you said, Senator,
have competition in the system. I come from a big State. I have
watched public education for 50 years carefully. I have seen
California go from one of the best to way down the list. And,
so, competition and charter schools and parochial and private
schools all have a role to play.
The question comes, ``Should somebody that does not have
the money for a parochial or private school be denied that
opportunity?,'' and that is where this scholarship opportunity
program comes in, because it clearly says, ``No.'' We believe
in competition. We want to open the door to competition and an
amount will be provided to make this opportunity real.
So, this program provides low-income students with up to
$8,381 to attend elementary school and middle school, and up to
$12,572 to attend high school. So, it is consequential. It may
not do the whole job, but for a family that needs help, it
gives that family the leg up.
Students have to meet only two requirements to apply for a
scholarship. Their families must be low-income and have lived
in the District for at least 5 years, and the scholarships can
be used for tuition, for uniforms, for books, and public
transportation.
I personally have an example in the District of someone who
did very well in this program. Very early on in her life, she
had a troubled public school education. I got to know her as a
3-year-old. I had the privilege of helping her go to a Catholic
school both in middle school and also in high school. She got
into Stanford University and this past fall she got her
Master's degree. So, alternative styles and venues of education
can be helpful, and somehow, we have to open our hearts and our
pocketbooks to this.
I believe so strongly that I have sent my staff out to some
36 of the 47 schools in the program. My staff made visits,
talked with parents and administrators about how the program
could be improved, and reported on what they saw. There were a
number of schools, 12 out of the 47, that did not have
accreditation, and I believe very strongly they should have
accreditation. I think this is the next step to really improve
education in this venue.
And, I am very pleased that in both the Senate and the
House bill, there is a portion that accredits the schools, in
other words, says they must be accredited within a certain
period of time, and I think that is an important improvement
and benefit.
But, I guess what I want to say is that I feel very
committed to this pathway. I have supported the Knowledge is
Power Program (KIPP) schools, other charter schools. I have
seen them make a difference in low-income neighborhoods in
California. And, I really believe that where education has to
provide this equal opportunity is to low-income families. If
they want to have a choice, we ought to make it possible for
them to have that choice. So, I am a locked and loaded
supporter of alternative education.
I just wanted to thank this Committee for your efforts and
support. I think it is a model, and I think it can be
developed, it can be improved. I spoke with former Mayor
Williams about this at a dinner held not long ago, and I gather
there is a new leadership group that is going to play a major
role in school development in this particular venue.
So, thank you. I am very happy to be a strong supporter of
the program.
Chairman Johnson. Again, thank you, Senator Feinstein, for
your support, and you certainly have our commitment to work
with you, with your leadership on this issue. Senator Scott.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE TIM SCOTT, A UNITED STATES SENATOR
FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Senator Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you, Ranking
Member Carper, and to all the other members of the Committee.
Senator Feinstein, it is certainly good to find an issue
that we can work together on, and this is a very important
issue for our Nation.
And, frankly, when you think about the issue of choice, you
think about a way for us to combat poverty, to grow our
economy, and to really unleash the potential of so many kids
around this country and, frankly, dozens upon dozens of kids
right behind us who are desperately looking for opportunities
to show what they are made of, to give us real examples of the
power of opportunity is to look at their success of the kids
behind us, and, frankly, to their parents. To me, the issue of
school choice is an issue that brings to light an opportunity
for them to see their kids reach their full potential, and in
my opinion, that is a very important consideration.
Too often, we hear conversations about Democrats and
Republicans, of blue versus red, and the fact of the matter is
the issue of school choice is not a partisan issue at all. It
is not an issue about Republicans or Democrats. It is and
should remain an issue about children. And, we see the success
of the school choice program, the Opportunity Scholarship
Program (OSP), all across the city of D.C.
And, I will tell you, as I thought through my comments for
this important hearing that Proverbs 22:6 came to mind,
training up a child in the way that he or she should go, so
that they can maximize their potential. And, to me, the
foundation of education is a key component in harnessing that
potential.
So many of these journeys start on rough roads, in little
houses, trailers, small apartments, journeys that are very much
like my own journey, living in a single-parent household in
real poverty in North Charleston, going to four different
elementary schools by the time I was in the third or fourth
grade. The reality of it is that school choice is an
opportunity to make sure that kids who grow up in the wrong zip
codes experience the best of life and not simply the
underperforming schools that may be in their districts.
I want to say this, and I want to make sure that I am clear
about it. I appreciate, love, and have great affection for
public schools. I am a product of public schools. As a matter
of fact, if you have a good public school, that is a great
thing. But, if you do not have a good public school, we should
make sure that the options are available for the students and
for their parents. That means every child everywhere in this
Nation should be afforded the opportunity to maximize their
potential through school choice.
And, Chairman Johnson, as you said at the beginning, your
commitment to this issue started before you were a United
States Senator. Ron, you were making investments in Milwaukee
and throughout Wisconsin with your own resources because you
understand and appreciate the power of education. That is an
issue that I learned a little later in life, as a kid whose
parents divorced when I was seven, growing up in a single-
parent household. I started drifting in the wrong direction. I
learned very quickly, Senator Sasse, that all drifting seems to
head in the wrong direction. [Laughter.]
Senator Carper. Was there some reason why you directed
those comments to him?
Senator Scott. It was his profound maiden speech.
Senator Carper. He gave a great maiden speech yesterday.
Senator Scott. Indeed. And, since my time is running out,
and Senators, we cannot tell time, so I had better hurry up
here, but the truth of the matter is, by the time I was a
freshman in high school, I was failing out. I failed world
geography. I thought I was the only Senator to ever fail
civics, and then I joined you guys and realized that perhaps
some of you did not do so well, either. [Laughter.]
You can say that to your own people. So, anyway, I failed
Spanish and English, as well. When you fail Spanish and you
fail English, they do not consider you bilingual. They call you
bi-ignorant, because you cannot speak any language, and that is
where I found my unhappy self.
But, I had the privilege and the blessing of a strong,
powerful mother who believed in education. She became so
invested in education for the next 3 years, I caught up, went
on to Charleston Southern University--``Go Bucks''--and
graduated with a degree in political science.
I will tell you this, that when I think about where these
kids are, here is what I think. I think that we are looking at
those kids that attend the OSP program have a graduation rate
of over 90 percent. Those kids in the district that do not go
to OSP schools have a graduation rate just above 50 percent. We
are spending a little more than $20,000 per student to make
sure that we have a 55, 56 percent graduation rate, but we
spend about 40 cents on the dollar and we see a 90-plus
graduation rate with parental satisfaction over 90 percent. And
last year alone, 98 percent of OSP students went on to earn a
two-or 4-year degree.
Senators, without much of a question, the divide in our
Nation between the haves and have-nots can be easily defined by
family formation--which I am not sure how we control that--and
education. We do have the opportunity to control that.
I know my time is running short, so let me just close by
saying that when you think about why these statistics and why
these numbers are so important, let me just translate it. Half
of African-American males do not finish high school in 4 years.
Too many do not finish at all. And for students who do not
finish high school, their income, on average, is $19,000. For
those students who finish high school, their income is 50
percent higher. For those who go on and finish college, it is
almost three times higher.
We do this, by the way, scholarship programs, public
dollars going to private schools, we do this every single day
of the year in America. We call those Pell Grants. I took my
Pell Grant to a small Christian school, Charleston Southern,
and I will tell you that the unfortunate reality is simply
this, that if you do not graduate from high school, you do not
use a Pell Grant. And in my opinion, this is not about the
numbers, though the numbers are very important. The cost of
school is very important. This is about human potential.
Let us not be confused about what we are talking about. We
are not talking about 20,000 versus 8,500. We are talking about
making sure that the kids behind me have the same opportunities
that each and every one of us who serve in this amazing body
has. It is our opportunity, our responsibility to stand up and
be counted for these kids that will lead us 1 day. And Lord
knows, as we look at the entitlement State of America, we are
going to need them to be taxpayers. God bless you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Scott. Delegate Holmes
Norton.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON,\1\ A DELEGATE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Ms. Norton. Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Carper, I very
much appreciate the opportunity to testify here this morning as
the Member of Congress who is privileged to represent the
residents of the District of Columbia. I regret we have no
representation in this body, but I certainly appreciate your
attention to our issues.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Delegate Norton appears in the
Appendix on page 47.
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Chairman Johnson, I want to begin by thanking you for your
bill to make improvements in the District of Columbia criminal
justice agencies. Your support of that bill here in the Senate
is an important reason why it is on its way to passage in the
House.
Now, I recognize that the bill before you providing
vouchers for some of our students--and I am very pleased to see
that among those who have come this morning are some of our
students who will see how the Congress operates--I recognize
that this bill may pass, so from the beginning, I have wanted
to work with my colleagues as the bill moves forward, if it
does, in support of this program that is $182 million to ensure
that the youngsters who receive the vouchers indeed get a high-
quality education. That was the point of the vouchers in the
first place.
I think I should first explain my own position. I have long
supported allowing the current students in the program to
remain until they graduate from high school. That is also the
position that the President has taken. I regarded that as a
reasonable compromise, even in a Congress which does not
compromise on almost anything any more. But, I thought this was
a reasonable compromise, considering that the District of
Columbia is one of the few jurisdictions in the United States
that has built significant alternatives for its traditional
public school system.
I oppose this program because it has failed to improve
academic achievements, including the students who it was most
designed to benefit, those from the lowest-performing public
schools. Now, during the more than 10 years this program has
been in effect, the same tests show the District of Columbia
public school's children have improved. The same tests show
that District of Columbia charter school test scores have
improved. But these voucher tests do not show similar
improvement, though that was the reason that the Congress said
that the District must accept this program.
This program violates the District's right to self-
government. The District was not even consulted about this
program, so might have had a better idea. This program deprives
students of their Federal civil rights protections. And, most
of all, it is unnecessary in our city, which, unlike most
jurisdictions, has seen a growth of public charter schools. You
will not find in most jurisdictions, as you do in the District
of Columbia, 44 percent of our children going to public
accountable charter schools. You will not find in most of these
districts that 75 percent of the students go to out-of-boundary
schools, schools of their choice.
I am proud of our public charter schools. When former
Speaker Newt Gingrich approached me and said he wanted private
school vouchers in the District of Columbia, and I was in the
minority, as I have for most of my time in the Congress, I
asked him, since the District had a fledgling charter school
system, only one or two charter schools, but at least it had
shown a home rule self-government interest in an alternative to
its public schools, I asked him to work with me on charter
schools, and that is how we got our charter school board, and
that is why 44 percent of our children attend charter schools,
and that is why our charter schools have long waiting lists,
even though the voucher schools do not have similar waiting
list.
Do you want to know what made our schools better? I believe
in competition, Senator Johnson. It was the competition from
these very good charter schools, often very near our public
schools. And that is what, that is the competition that has
made them into better schools today.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that
this program in the bill before you lacks quality controls and
transparency. I very much appreciate that the bill attempts to
improve the program by requiring students, at the very least,
to go to accredited schools. But I have to ask you, how could
this Congress have allowed these students to go to unaccredited
schools for now more than 10 years, simply because a voucher
schools sprang up in their neighborhood? Of course,
accreditation is a relatively low bar.
Now, there are a number of high-quality schools in this
program, but Congress should not be funding schools that could
not exist except for this program's virtually unconditional
Federal funds. What I am referring to, we have called ``voucher
mills,'' fly by-night schools that sprang up in some low-income
neighborhoods only after Congress created this program.
For example, the GAO found that voucher students comprised
more than 80 percent of the school enrollment in six schools.
The Washington Post did its own investigation entitled,
``Quality Controls Lacking for D.C. Schools Accepting Federal
Vouchers.'' Reporters spoke to officials of some of these
schools. An example from one of them was, and I am quoting,
``If this program were to end, this school would end.''
The Senator spoke of competition. If a school has to rely
primarily on Federal funds to exist, that is reason enough, it
seems to me, that shows that market demand has not allowed that
school to attract students, and if it cannot attract students
on its own, then it should not attract Federal funds on its
own.
To accomplish the purpose of eliminating schools that
should not be funded by Federal funds, because they do not have
the quality, because they could not exist except for Federal
funds, I have offered an amendment in the House to limit
voucher students to 50 percent of a school's total enrollment,
and that is a fairly liberal requirement. Although my amendment
was not accepted, I appreciated that the majority indicated
that they did support eliminating voucher mills. I do not know,
perhaps there is a better way to do it than my 50 percent
suggestion. I would be open, and I am certain you would,
Senator, to any way to make sure that the quality that the
vouchers were after is there in the schools that are available.
I do believe that there is a burden on this Congress to
ensure that the high-quality schools funded by this program,
such as our accredited Catholic schools, do not have to compete
for funds with voucher mill schools that would not exist except
for these Federal funds.
It is disappointing to me that although prior
authorizations of this bill included evaluation to be done--and
here I am quoting the congressional language--``conducted using
the strongest possible research design.'' Thus far, the program
has been evaluated using that design. That is how we evaluate
the children of public schools and the public charter schools,
and that is how we know whether they are, in fact, improving or
not improving.
In contrast, this bill requires the evaluation to be
conducted using what it calls an acceptable quasi-experimental
research design and expressly prohibits using random controlled
trials. This, even though the researchers involved with this
evaluation said, and I am quoting them now, that ``random
controlled trials are especially important in the context of
school schools, because families wanting to apply for choice
programs may have educational goals and aspirations that differ
from the average family.'' In other words, we should be
comparing apples to apples and not to whatever oranges or other
fruits happen to spring up in our study.
I very much appreciate that there is an interest in the
Congress in our children. Certainly with the help of Speaker
Gingrich, we got what is now a flourishing charter school
movement and charter schools that have been evaluated as the
best charter schools in the country. We ask only to be treated
as your constituents are treated, to be consulted on matters
affecting us, and that is why I had decided that it was my
obligation to come here this morning and to testify before you.
And I very much appreciate the opportunity that you have given
me.
Chairman Johnson. We appreciate your testimony, and, I
think, rest assured, we may have differences in terms of how
the opportunity is provided, but it is a goal we all share. We
want every American, every child, to have the opportunity to
get a good education so they can build a good life for
themselves, their families. So, again, we certainly appreciate
your passion on this and we appreciate your testimony.
And with that, we will----
Senator Booker. Mr. Chairman, if I just may extend my
thanks, as well, not only for her presence here, but the
Congresswoman's office has been working with mine assiduously
on improving this legislation. So, she is not just against it
and not engaging. She is actually leaning in and trying to help
correct what she sees as flaws in the current legislation. So,
she has been tireless and she is working on behalf of a
District, again, and I hate to editorialize, but it is, in my
opinion, outrageous that they do not have more representation
in this body.
Chairman Johnson. No. And, again, we appreciate the search
for those areas of agreement to improve. I come from a
manufacturing background. I am into continuous improvements.
So, again, we appreciate your testimony and your efforts.
We will seat the next panel now.
[Pause.]
Chairman Johnson. Again, I want to welcome the witnesses.
We were really privileged to have an overflow crowd here, so we
invited some of the students and their teachers and
administrators to come join us in the back of the panel here,
which is a little unusual, but I kind of like it.
It is the tradition of this Committee to swear in witnesses
so if you all would stand up and raise your right hand.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you will give
before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth?
Mr. Chavous. I do.
Ms. Blaufuss. I do.
Mr. Jones. I do.
Ms. Catalan. I do.
Mr. Lubienski. I do.
Chairman Johnson. Please be seated.
Our first witness is Kevin Chavous. He is a former member
of the Council of the District of Columbia and Chair of the
Council's Education Committee. Mr. Chavous is a founding board
member and Executive Council for the American Federation for
Children, the Chairman of Serving Our Children, Board Chair for
Democrats for Education Reform, and former Board Chair for the
Black Alliance for Educational Options. Mr. Chavous.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE KEVIN P. CHAVOUS,\1\ CHAIRMAN,
SERVING OUR CHILDREN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Chavous. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Johnson and
Senator Carper and Members of the Committee, for this
opportunity to testify on a subject that is near and dear to my
heart, namely school choice generally and specifically here in
the District of Columbia, the D.C. OSP.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Chavous appears in the Appendix
on page 49.
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As you indicated, I served on the D.C. Council for 12 years
and over half that time I was Chairman of the Education
Committee, and from that perspective, I developed a keen
awareness of the plight of many low-income students here in the
Nation's capital. During my tenure on the Council, it became
increasingly evident to me that many of the public schools
serving our children in the most underserved communities were
failing our students. These students needed options other than
just the neighborhood public schools that may or may not be
working.
Here in the District, despite, as you have heard, having
some of the highest per pupil expenditures compared to other
States, our students are dropping out or performing abysmally
on national assessment tests, and I first sought to promote
school choice by advocating for charter schools. This is a
movement that has thrived in the District, demonstrating a high
demand for school choice among its residents.
I do want to take this opportunity right now to point out
that contrary to some of the claims of the critics and even my
good friend, Delegate Norton, this program had high support in
the District. Parenthetically, I just might add that I remember
hearing from my father, he said, you always need to read
because revisionist history is a dangerous thing. This program
was not forced upon the city. Indeed, when Secretary Paige and
President Bush approached Mayor Williams and I in 2003. They
talked about a scholarship program.
The city's involvement was clear and evident when it became
a three-sector strategy. It was Mayor Williams' and I view that
if we are going to have a Federal program and a Federal
partnership, let us make it a true Federal partnership and let
us lift all boats. And that is how we ended up having an equal
amount of money at the time going to D.C. Public Schools, D.C.
Public Charter Schools, and the scholarship program.
And, frankly, over the last 10 years since the program has
been in existence, all of the money that has come from the
Federal Government to help this three-sector strategy take
hold, $239 million have gone to D.C. Public Schools, the vast
majority, compared to the other two programs. A hundred-and-
ninety-five million have gone to the charter schools, and $188
million have gone to the scholarship. So, even with the advent
of this program, not only has D.C. Public Schools been held
harmless in terms of not having an impact on their budget, they
have gotten far more money than the other two sectors, and
that, again, shows that this was a true partnership.
I might add that in addition to Mayor Williams and I,
School Board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz, the President of
the School Board at the time, was also supportive.
I support public schools, and during my tenure as Chair of
the Education Committee, we fought hard to make sure D.C.
Public Schools got its fair share. But as a country, we need to
make sure that our public schools live up to their promise. One
of the reasons why we supported this program in the beginning
was Congresswoman Norton referred to the charter schools that
we had. Mayor Williams and I realized back in 2003 that we had
thousands of children on the waiting lists for charter schools,
and still many parents came to us wanting to have other
options.
I support the reforms that have taken place under Kaya
Henderson's leadership and before that her predecessor,
Michelle Rhee. Their commitment to public school reform and the
public school reform movement is important and is noteworthy.
But equal education should be a civil right for all
students in America. A quality education is the on ramp to
economic independence. It is the gateway to keeping at risk
students away from drugs and out of prison. Regrettably, as
Senator Scott said, equal education opportunity is not the norm
today. Affluent families get access to the best education
options, but too often, low-income students have very limited
and often inadequate choices.
Given these facts and statistics, it is puzzling to me how
anyone can be against this program. Here is a program that has
over a 91 percent graduation rate, over a 90 percent college
going rate, it has produced thousands of opportunities for kids
who otherwise would not have them at a time when D.C. Public
Schools is still in the midst of its reform but still has not
produced the same graduation rates and results as these schools
have. What is there not to like?
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee, let me
just briefly, before I close, address a couple of concerns
raised by the GAO report that was referred to earlier.
As you indicated, I am the Chairman of Serving Our
Children. We have board members that include a former parent of
the program, Donald Hense runs the Friendship Schools, and also
Mayor Williams. We are one month in as the new administrator of
the program and it is our desire to make sure that we live up
to the expectations placed on us to ensure that this program is
administered effectively.
There are several things that we will be doing. One is we
received a significant private grant, much of which will go
toward implementing major technology upgrades, and we are
currently talking to companies and receiving those proposals.
We intend to develop policies and procedures to ensure the
financial viability and sustainability of the participating
schools. There was some mention about transparency. We will
make sure that we are transparent. We intend to enforce the
policy of ensuring that any unaccredited schools become fully
accredited within 5 years. We have been working closely with
Senator Feinstein's office on that. We want to increase program
participation and awareness. We intend to develop internal
procedures to ensure that our administrative expenses are
accurately tracked. All of these things were alluded to in the
GAO report and we are working diligently and will continue to
work diligently to improve them.
In sum, a quality education is the foundation for achieving
the American dream. Promoting equal education opportunity not
only benefits disadvantaged children, but, frankly, it benefits
all American. Equal education opportunity is the key to
tackling the rampant socioeconomic problems that plague our
inner cities. And to the extent that we can provide
opportunities for at-risk youth, our entire Nation benefits
from reduced crime, a far more productive workforce, and a more
prosperous economy.
In the past, in many speeches I have given around the
country on this topic, I refer to Dr. Martin Luther King's
message during the civil rights movement regarding the fierce
urgency of now. People should not have to wait for their civil
rights, he said at the time, and a quality education today
should be a civil right, especially in a wealthy country like
ours. A child should not have to wait three to 5 years for a
school district reform plan to kick in. We could lose a child,
or many children, and the dropout statistics suggest we are
while we wait for the system to improve itself.
For these reasons, we at Serving Our Children are dedicated
to the concept that all children can achieve and excel if given
the opportunity and the right environment. We hope that our
efforts to ensure that all kids, regardless of geography, zip
code, socioeconomic status, have an opportunity for quality
education and a chance to thrive and achieve and reach their
full potential. It is something that this Committee continues
to share, and we appreciate your support in the past.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chavous.
Our next witness is Beth Blaufuss. Ms. Blaufuss is the
President of Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, DC,
where she previously served as the Vice Principal for Academic
Affairs. Prior to her time at Archbishop Carroll, Ms. Blaufuss
taught English at Bishop McNamara High School in Prince
George's County as well as at Maplewood High School in
Nashville, Tennessee, and the Sydney Grammar School in Sydney,
Australia. Ms. Blaufuss received her Bachelor's degree from
Yale College and her Master's in education from Vanderbilt
University.
And I just have to note that Ms. Blaufuss hosted Senator
Carper and myself for a tour of your school and what we
witnessed was a safe and nurturing environment for learning,
and I really did appreciate the time that you and your students
and your other administrators and teachers carved out for us to
show us what I thought was a very wonderful school. Ms.
Blaufuss.
TESTIMONY OF MARY ELIZABETH BLAUFUSS,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ARCHBISHOP CARROLL HIGH SCHOOL, WASHINGTON,
D.C.
Ms. Blaufuss. Thank you, Senator Johnson. It was a joy to
have you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Blaufuss appears in the Appendix
on page 53.
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On behalf of the schools privileged to educate Opportunity
Scholars, thank you. I have seen the impact of the Opportunity
Scholarship firsthand. The most compelling reason to
reauthorize it is that it works where it really counts.
In the 2010 study, Opportunity Scholars were 21 percent
more likely to graduate from high school than those in the
control group who qualified for the scholarship but did not win
the lottery for it. The same researchers called the program,
quote, ``one of the most effective urban dropout prevention
programs yet witnessed,'' end quote.
Since the OSP began, Archbishop Carroll has graduated 221
Opportunity Scholars. Data from the D.C. Children and Youth
Investment Trust indicates that 88 percent of OSP graduates go
on to college, compared to 49 percent of low-income students
nationally.
While we often tout the loudest those who go on to colleges
with national reputations, like Dartmouth or Columbia, many of
our OSP graduates of whom I am the most proud are those who
come to us reading behind grade level but who still complete a
rigorous college prep curriculum, or those like Mark, a student
who admitted to me that he was not really even thinking about
college as an option before he came to our school, or graduates
who have endured periods of homelessness while they are in high
school.
The numbers and numerous anecdotes I could share tell the
same story. The Opportunity Scholarship improves outcomes.
When the program's researchers controlled for different
sizes in the treatment and control groups and for clustering in
specific schools, they did find statistically significant
reading gains, equivalent to about 1 month of additional
learning per year. The researchers also State that scoring high
on tests is less important to a student's graduation prospects
than academic habits and dispositions, such as self discipline,
commitment, grit, and determination. OSP schools like Carroll
foster those crucial dispositions.
In 2013 and 2014, our school's SAT scores improved at a
rate double that of the average for all D.C. public and private
schools. Our graduates now persist in college at a rate 20
percent higher than the national average. We are just one of
many private schools in the District innovating every day to do
better by all of our students.
As a District of Columbia taxpayer and as a school leader
who received applications from students attending a very small
handful of sub-par schools, I embrace measures that preserve
our schools independent approaches without tolerating fiscal or
academic irresponsibility. The D.C. charter schools faced
challenges similar to those of so-called storefront OSP
schools. In 2007, oversight of charter schools was streamlined
and schools improved. Similarly, the OSP has a new
administrator as of this fall. I urge you to allow that
administrator to prove its effectiveness.
I am proud of my city's educational progress. The most
important reason to seek private school choice is not that
public schools are bad. It is that choice is good. Wealthy and
middle-income families have the means to explore private
schools along with public and charter options. It seems
fundamentally unfair for low-income families to have fewer
choices than wealthy ones, as Senator Feinstein indicated.
As OSP graduation data reveal, the mere presence of a full
range of choices can improve outcomes for a low-income student.
A growing body of research suggests that socioeconomically
diverse schools improve achievement and social skills for all
students. When the gap between high and low-income
Washingtonians is at its highest since 1979, we risk real
dangers to all of us if we allow children to grow up with
unchallenged economic segregation. I would ask this Committee
to consider the social as well as the academic benefits of OSP.
Amid talk of data, it is easy to forget that the core of
education is relationships among students and teachers.
Education is not some intellectual car wash where we just
perform a series of operations on kids and they come out bright
and sparkly. It is a series of leaps that individual students'
minds and hearts must make. The greater the leaps we ask
students to make, the stronger must be their relationships with
the people who are asking them to take those risks.
Relationships are stronger when we choose them, as families do
in the OSP.
Dajanae is a bright, determined Carroll senior who, like
some Members of Congress, was always convinced that she was
right and resisted most attempts at constructive criticism,
often landing her in the dean's office when she first arrived
at our school. Now, she has become a student leader at Carroll.
She told me, ``I never would have grown as much if I had not
come here with the forgiveness and patience of the teachers.''
She is but one example of the students for whom choice of a
school community has made all the difference.
The OSP allows low-income students to foster relationships
crucial to graduation in the same range of schools upper-income
families have and I urge you to preserve the program on their
behalf. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Ms. Blaufuss.
Our next witness is Gary Jones. Mr. Jones is a father of
five children with his wife of 21 years, Stacy, and resides in
Ward 8 of the District of Columbia. Three of Mr. Jones'
children have enrolled in private schools through the D.C.
Opportunity Scholarship Program. For the past 2 years, Mr.
Jones has spoken at rallies, attended hearings, and met with
D.C. officials as a parent advocate of the program. Mr. Jones.
TESTIMONY OF GARY JONES,\1\ PARENT, D.C. OPPORTUNITY
SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Jones. Good morning, Senator Johnson. I would like to
thank you for inviting me here. I would also like to thank the
Committee members and Ranking Member Carper for also inviting
me.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Jones appears in the Appendix on
page 60.
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My story is this. My children have had the opportunity to
attend D.C. schools in all three sectors, public, charter, and
private schools, throughout the years with varying degrees of
success. By far, we saw the greatest level of achievement for
our children when we had them in private schools. Charters did
not work for my children, while DCPS was mediocre, at best.
From what I heard earlier from the earlier panel, I have to
say this about charters. Charter schools, from my research and
my family's experience, have not met their AYP, the annual year
progress. When my children were in charter schools, my wife and
I noticed that several students were being retained in the same
class, like ninth and tenth grade, like, repeatedly.
Public schools, like I said, I do not have any animosity
toward them because my mother was a public school teacher, but,
again, they were mediocre, at best.
My three older children were OSP recipients under the old
Washington Scholarship Fund, an administrator that gave
siblings a preference for entry. This allowed my son, Joshua,
and my daughters, Aaliyah and Yasmine, to attend the same
schools. Joshua received a full scholarship and the sisters
partial scholarships. This was a huge benefit to my older
children and to our family, for which my wife and I are truly
grateful.
However, due to this Department of Education's
misinterpretation of the law, my daughter, Sabirah, is in the
OSP program through high school, yet my youngest daughter,
Tiffany because she is already enrolled in a private school, is
considered ineligible.
I have to tell you, the financial burden is wearing on our
family. I am currently making ends meet by working two jobs in
order to keep my daughters together in the same school. They
are in an educational community that I trust to keep them safe,
educate them at a level that more than prepares them for
college, and will give them a better future for their parents.
Is that not the American dream? Having parental choice in
education is what will give my children the best chance at the
American dream.
I am stunned and I am angry at the attitude of my
representative, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and her
opposition to this incredible program. Delegate Norton, like
President Obama, only supports allowing the current children to
finish the program while opposing the admitting of new
students. What makes the children in the program now more
deserving than the children who desperately want the same
opportunities?
Parents in parts of D.C. need good choices now and we
cannot wait for schools to improve or waiting lists to drop.
D.C. has a 58 percent dropout rate in the District of Columbia
Public Schools. My three older children, who, after they left
the Washington Scholarship Program, they went to Ballou Senior
High School, where they did graduate, but that was a one-
percent graduation rate for the seniors each year.
Ms. Norton talked about accountability. As has been stated,
more than 98 percent of OSP kids graduate and go on to college.
That is accountability. Some of the best private schools in
D.C. participate in the OSP program, including Sidwell Friends,
where the Obama girls go, Archbishop John Carroll, Georgetown
Day, Gonzaga, and my children's school, St. Thomas More
Catholic Academy. Those individuals who are more fortunate can
afford to send their children to schools on this list.
The public schools in this city have failed tens of
thousands
of children over the years, and while there has been
improvement--I must be fair, there has been gradual
improvement--they are nowhere near where they need to be. As a
parent, what should we do, continue to wait? I do not think
that is fair.
Sadly, eight members of the D.C. City Council signed a
letter saying they oppose the program, one of whom his son
attends Gonzaga High School, which I found hypocritical. I do
not remember any of these Council members, including my own,
who guaranteed me that she was for this program, ask me or any
of the 1,600 families that take advantage of this fantastic
program our opinion. Do any of these City Council members have
any idea how much this initiative generates in additional funds
for all of the District's children, whether they are in the
D.C. Public Schools, charter schools, or the OSP schools? Do
these Council members really want to turn their backs on
millions of dollars? Where is the logic in that line of
thinking?
The D.C. OSP program is an amazing program, and for those
of us fortunate enough to have a child in this program, we are
very grateful and we say we thank you from the bottom of our
hearts.
It makes a difference. We, the families, have seen this
program make a difference in our children's lives and want this
program to be reauthorized. We, the families, want the law to
be followed so siblings get preference. We, the families, want
to make sure that other families desperate for a better
educational environment for their children get this
opportunity. We, the families, are desperate for an ongoing
choice. We will continue to fight for those who have not had
this life-changing opportunity.
I thank you for the opportunity to testify today in support
of this reauthorization for this program. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Jones.
Our next witness, we are very pleased to have Linda Cruz
Catalan. Ms. Catalan is a high school senior at the Field
School, where she has attended for the past 4 years. Outside of
her study, Ms. Catalan participates in cross country and in a
traditional Mexican dance ensemble, volunteers at the National
Museum of Natural History, and tutors with the Latino Student
Fund and Girls Who Code. Ms. Catalan is considering several
universities, where she intends to pursue a career in computer
science. Ms. Catalan.
TESTIMONY OF LINDA CRUZ CATALAN,\1\ STUDENT, THE FIELD SCHOOL,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Catalan. Thank you. My name is Linda Cruz Catalan and I
am currently enrolled in the Field School in Washington, D.C.,
so I am going to talk a little bit more about myself.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Cruz appears in the Appendix on
page 62.
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At Field, I have had the opportunity to learn, create, and
build connections that will last me years and years to come. I
am extremely lucky to be going to the Field School itself. I
have always come from a low-income family. My parents work
extremely hard to pay for clothes, food, and the townhouse we
live in. They are the two hardest working people I have known
today and they are extremely resilient. In my mind, they have
always been the pure image of what it means to make something
out of nothing.
Before Field, I went to a school called Oyster Adams
Bilingual School. This school was a very good stepping stone in
my life and I was exposed to a lot of cultures and backgrounds.
Besides seeing kids from middle-class families who could afford
a high school education for their children, I also saw kids who
were from lower-income families, like mine. These kids usually
went on to local high schools, which was next in line for them
if they did not either pay for a private school education or
take advantage of programs and scholarships to get them there.
I saw that a lot of these kids had multiple problems, meaning
that a large public high school would not be beneficial for
them.
At the time I was associated with a program, and still am,
with a program that gives underprivileged kids these
opportunities called D.C. Opportunity. They helped me and gave
me these opportunities, the biggest one being the opportunity
to go to the Field School. This program awarded me with a
$12,000 scholarship to attend the school of my choice. Since
2004, there have been 16,000 children that applied for this
opportunity in the Washington, DC. area, and I was one of the
lucky finalists to receive this opportunity to go to the Field
School.
So far, through my lifetime, I have seen many
underprivileged kids that come from lower-class families and do
not have the opportunity that other scholarships like these are
giving them, and most of these kids are extremely smart and
deserve a big future where they can get educated in any
institution they choose. I recommend that kids enroll in all
these programs similar to D.C. Opportunity.
I currently am interested in math programming, engineering,
and dance, and I wish to explore these things far into my
future without anybody telling me I cannot do it just because
of my background and socioeconomic class. If it was not for
these many opportunities, I would not have been able to explore
all these in the Field School and have the amazing privilege to
explore them throughout the college of my choosing. Eventually,
I wish to have a fruitful career in one of these fields and I
am confident that I can do so.
And to add in, I am very thankful for everyone who is
giving us, a student like me, these opportunities to study in
college. And, again, I am not saying I had a great education
from the Montessori I went to from pre-K to kinder and then
Oyster Adams, but after college, my family struggled to find
the right education. It was either my neighborhood school that
I would have gone to, but in that time, I was enrolled in a
program that found the school right for me. And especially as a
kid who struggled with being in a middle school class of 35
kids in one classroom, now, I am able to talk to my teacher
one-on-one after school and during class, when my smallest
class now, which is currently computer science, where we are
only six students in that classroom.
And, I am extremely grateful for these opportunities that
teachers, everyone, staff members, everyone in the school are
offering. And, that is my story. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Well, thank you. I think we all are
really glad that you got those opportunities, and I think we
also think you are going to go far, so we really appreciate
your testimony.
Our final witness is Dr. Christopher Lubienski. Dr.
Lubienski is a Professor of Education Policy and the Director
of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the
University of Illinois. Dr. Lubienski is a Fellow with the
National Education Policy Center and Co-Chair of the K through
12 Working Group with the Scholar Strategy Network at Harvard
University. Dr. Lubienski has published over 80 academic
papers, with his most recent publication being ``The Public
School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private
Schools.'' Dr. Lubienski.
TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER A. LUBIENSKI, PH.D.,\1\ PROFESSOR,
EDUCATION POLICY, ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP, UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS
Dr. Lubienski. Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity to
speak with you about our shared goal of providing quality
education for all children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Lubienski appears in the Appendix
on page 64.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My name is Chris Lubienski. I am a professor at the
University of Illinois and my research over the past two
decades has centered on the impacts of school choice policies,
things like charter schools and vouchers, in the U.S. and in
other countries, as well.
Research on school choice and vouchers, in particular, is
typically focused on the question of academic achievements, and
for good reason. As you know, the official evaluation of the
D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program concluded there was no
conclusive evidence the program affected student achievement.
After 3 years, there were impacts for some groups of students
in reading, but not in math, and not for other groups, and not
overall. Positive impacts were also reported on graduation
rates for a somewhat different set of students.
These results generally reflect the findings of other
voucher studies, where any impacts appear infrequently and
inconsistently across groups and sub-groups of students, across
cities, grade levels, and subject areas. Working with my
collaborator at Illinois, Jameson Brewer, I examined the
findings of studies frequently held out as the highest quality
research in support of vouchers, which covered programs in five
cities, including Washington.
While the analyses typically found no overall impacts from
vouchers, in the cases where impacts were evident for some sub-
groups, any effects were erratic, showing up for some students
in one subject, but not for the same students in a different
subject, or year, or in a different city.
For instance, in a previous evaluation of an earlier
program in Washington, researchers found a positive impact for
African-American students in year two, but negative and
insignificant effects for those same students in years one and
three, with no impacts on any other ethnic groups. This raises
questions as to why. Why are we seeing such variability?
This is somewhat surprising, given the strong theory behind
vouchers. We have had voucher programs in the U.S. for a
quarter-century, and the reasons why we thought they would work
to improve outcomes have not really played out. As Princeton
economist Cecilia Rouse has observed, the best research to date
finds relatively small achievement gains for students offered
vouchers, most of which are not statistically different from
zero.
Although the benefits have been somewhat elusive, it is
quite reasonable to ask, should we still support such programs
so long as no one is shown to be harmed? I am less persuaded by
the argument that there is no evidence of harm, simply because
most studies have not been designed to identify measures of
negative impacts, and I say that for two reasons.
First, it is reasonable to think that some students, in
fact, have not had a positive experience with these programs,
while others, including many of the people in this room, have
no doubt benefited substantially from voucher programs. Since
the overall academic impacts are typically not statistically
different from zero, that would suggest that for every student
benefiting, there is approximately one other who has had a
negative experience.
And, second, most evaluations have not really studied the
effects of vouchers on non-voucher schools. Specifically, what
happens to the children left behind in struggling schools when
classmates with concerned and motivated parents leave?
Research going back to the 1960s, including my recent
federally funded research with Sarah Lubienski, strongly
suggests that a student's peers have a major influence on that
student's learning, with this so-called peer effect having a
much more consistent impact than voucher programs have been
shown to exert. In fact, it is quite likely that exposure to a
higher level of what Chingos and Peterson call ``peer quality''
in private schools explains much of the academic outcomes in
voucher studies, particularly in reading, for reasons which I
could explain, and in graduation rates. Unfortunately, this
issue is not typically examined in studies of voucher programs,
yet in all likelihood contributes to a diminishing educational
experience for those students left behind in struggling
schools.
In conclusion, there are reasons for caution in hearing
claims about the benefits of vouchers. Overall, in looking at
the potential and measured outcomes of these programs, I would
say that there are better arguments for vouchers than their
academic impacts.
Again, I want to thank you for this opportunity to share my
assessment with you and for your interest in this really
important issue. Thanks.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Dr. Lubienski.
Ms. Catalan, I just want to quickly ask you, you said you
were lucky to obtain that voucher. How long did you wait to
find out whether you were one of the lucky lottery winners and
what was that like waiting?
Ms. Catalan. Well, I was very nervous of waiting. I think,
definitely, I am going to go straight to the point that if it
were not for my parents, I would not have been at the Field
School, because especially as a middle schooler just focused on
academics, trying to be a straight-A student, trying to get the
best grades I can, I really did not think of high school. I did
not think of the high school I was going to, and my parents are
the ones, really, who decided, Linda, I think this will be the
best opportunity for you, where you do not have to stay at that
one A grade, where you will be able to struggle in classes,
where you are going to have the opportunity to step up.
It was--personally, after I found out that I received the
scholarship, of course, I was very happy, along with the other
students. I was nervous, as well, because I was going to a
complete different school. I was going to miss my experience at
Oyster that I had for the 8 years and--and the wait, I
definitely cannot talk much about that, because that was most
of the part of my parents.
But, again, going back to that, I believe that is
important, that the parents do know, as well, that there are
opportunities out there for their kids, because I know students
now who wish, wow, I wish my parents did this for me, and I
think that is important.
Chairman Johnson. So, it was hard working, caring motivated
parents.
Ms. Catalan. Yes, and I am thankful.
Chairman Johnson. I had the same benefit, by the way.
People say I was a hard worker. That is because my Mom and Dad
made me. So, glad you have great parents.
Mr. Chavous, you made a comment that said, it is puzzling
how anyone can be opposed. I mean, I agree. It is. And, I
think, Ms. Blaufuss, you said choice is good. Is that not just
obvious, giving people choice, letting people have the freedom
to choose opportunity for their children?
So, that begs the question, why do people oppose?
Mr. Chavous. Well, I think that this has become such a
polarizing issue politically largely because of the political
arm of the Teachers' Union, I think, and it has been couched in
terms of an either/or proposition. The education of our
children should not be cast in partisan terms, nor should it be
cast in terms of either/or. The beauty of choice, as we move
down this road toward personalized learning--and that is where
it is all headed.
Anyone who looks at the trends, just like we all have
individual smartphones, we are headed toward this brave new
world of personalized learning where choice is going to matter,
and you will have kids in high school who will take classes at
a community college for credits and they will take a virtual
blended program and go into a traditional setting and they will
end up with a diverse experience on their way toward
personalized learning.
And, the beauty of choice is that it gives parents a stake
in the game early in the process. When people talk about
studies and why they are against it, they should look at Paul
Peterson's work or Patrick Wolf's work, who did the study on
this program. Beth's comment about it being one of the best
dropout prevention programs around, I think that the politics,
the partisanship, and, unfortunately, the tendency not to put
kids first and their interests first is one of the main reasons
why this has become so polarizing.
But, the reality is, and Beth knows this, being hands on,
is that she made a really good point about beyond the studies,
if you look at the change, the life trajectory at these
programs and the kids who get these programs benefit from, and
the change in their academic habits, the way they view the
world, their ability to excite what is possible where otherwise
it was not there, that has had a huge benefit. And I would
commit that you should look at Paul Peterson's study of those
African-American kids in New York who received private school
scholarships and that bears that out.
Chairman Johnson. So, just quickly, you quoted a 91 percent
graduation rate of those schools with Opportunity Scholarships
compared to--do you have just the percentage?
Mr. Chavous. I think it is--D.C. Public Schools is 60
percent. It is around 60 percent.
Chairman Johnson. That is a significant difference right
there.
Mr. Chavous. It is a significant----
Chairman Johnson. And I know Ms. Blaufuss mentioned a 21
percent higher graduation rate.
So, just to quickly summarize, you are saying the
opposition comes from the Teachers' Unions for whatever reason.
That is the primary opposition to this.
Mr. Chavous. Yes, and the reality is, the only people who
really are against school choice are the ones who have it.
Chairman Johnson. Often, I think, back in the State of
Wisconsin, the argument is made, well, you are robbing--you are
taking money away from the public system and allocating it
there, so you are going to disadvantage kids in public school.
In case of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, that is
actually--because of this program, there is another $622
million per year flowing into the District's schools, right?
Mr. Chavous. Yes----
Chairman Johnson. So, there is no robbing Peter to pay Paul
in this case. There is actually a net increase in funding for
the D.C.--so that certainly cannot be used as an argument.
Mr. Chavous. They have more than any other sector over the
last 10 years.
Chairman Johnson. So, again, so, tell me in your words, why
is the Teachers' Union opposed to this in the D.C. school
system? It makes no sense. You said it is puzzling. I am
puzzled, as well.
Mr. Chavous. Well, I do not know why. I do think that, as I
said, the politics of the day is the biggest challenge. But, I
also think that people are used to the fight in education, and
if we really are looking at what is best for kids, then there
is no way to be against this program.
Chairman Johnson. I agree.
Ms. Blaufuss, how do you measure what you instill in
students in your school? And again, Senator Carper and I were
there. We saw a safe and nurturing environment. I was in one
classroom, kind of a quasi-religious--by the way, the number of
Catholics or percentage of Catholics is slightly more than 20
percent, right----
Ms. Blaufuss. It is 24 percent.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. So you are a very ecumenical
school.
Ms. Blaufuss. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. One classroom, and the discussion was the
students' definition of ``love'' versus Webster's definition,
and I will tell you, what the students as a class came up with
was a far more meaningful definition of ``love'' than the very
dry definition. So, just sitting in that safe and nurturing
environment and hearing that very high level discussion was
really inspiring. How do you measure that?
Ms. Blaufuss. I think that is a great question, because
metrics are incredibly important in education and we look at a
host of different testing data in order to determine whether we
are doing right by our students. We just happen to like the
tests we have chosen. So, we are an International Baccalaureate
Diploma program school, internationally recognized rigorous
college preparatory program. So, we use the information that
those tests tell us not only to figure out how we are doing,
but to pinpoint solutions to help us do better.
But, as you point out, there is a whole set of
characteristics that are going to help someone be successful in
college, as a parent, as a coworker in a workplace, that we as
a Nation, I do not think, yet have metrics for. And, I think we
cannot, as educators, only commit ourselves to those things
that we are going to measure. And I think that is one of the
great advantages we have as an institution, is to spend time
working on how our kids get along, helping cultivate their
virtue, hearing from them the strategies that help them be more
virtuous.
We are still looking for ways to measure virtue. I think if
anyone comes up with a metric, I would be grateful for it. But,
nevertheless, we do not let the lack of metrics dictate the
importance of those characteristics as part of----
Chairman Johnson. One measure is just having schools that
are allowed to teach it, and values, and morals, and the
parental involvement. The reason I thought the Catholic school
system in Oshkosh was such a special place was because of that
parental involvement, because they were able to teach morals
and values and virtue. That is extremely powerful, and I am not
sure that is going to show up in any test scores or anything
else, but it sure shows up in character and sure shows up in
achievement and success in life. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
It is great to see all of you. I am sorry I was not here
when you started your testimony. I was testifying myself before
the Senate Budget Committee on a proposal for a 2-year budget
process for the Federal Government. So, I missed most of your
testimonies.
Linda, I caught the tail end of yours and you are one of
the best witnesses I have seen lately. Actually, this was a
good panel, how old are you now, 27?
Ms. Catalan. Seventeen years old. [Laughter.]
Senator Carper. Pretty impressive. [Laughter.]
I listened to all of you, and especially you, Linda,
testifying, reminded me--and the Chairman has already just said
this and I am going to reiterate it--I am a recovering
Governor. I served as Governor of the State of Delaware, a
great privilege, from 1993 to 2001, and we focused every day on
raising student achievement, every single day. We adopted
charter schools, public school choice. If you happen to be a
kid in a school district--we have 19 school districts. If you
happen to be a kid and, let us say, you are 6 years old and you
are a first grader and there are five elementary schools in
your district, public school choice, if they have room, you can
go to any one of those other four schools and the money follows
the student.
I love competition, and it has been engendered by public
school choice and charter schools. This next September when
school reconvenes, about 10 months from now, half the kids in
the city of Wilmington will be going to public charter schools.
We have great traditional public schools in Delaware and
one of them is Mount Pleasant, a high school which is about two
miles from my home. And, Beth, I go for long runs on Sunday
mornings before church and I run on their track. But inside
that school during Monday through Friday, it is an IB school
and they have done great things, traditional public school, by
trying something different, experimenting.
But, I am reminded here today as I was every day I was
Governor, the greatest predictor of kids doing well in school
is the expectation of their parents. If you have somebody at
home, at least one somebody at home in your life that has a
high expectation of you, not just to say, oh, I expect you to
do well, but actually help, set an example, personal example,
work with kids early on, we read with our boys who are now 25
and 27 almost from the day they were born. They came home from
the hospital, started reading, continued to read. Even right up
through the eighth grade, I read to Ben the Harry Potter
novels. I think I enjoyed that as much as he did, probably
more. Then he started reading to me, which was even better. Can
I go to bed, Ben? ``No,'' he said. ``No, Dad. You have to stay
up until I finish this book.''
But, a great predictor of kids doing well, expectation of
their parents. Another great predictor of kids doing well,
early childhood, and reading is part of it, but the earlier
that we start, the better. You have a bunch of kids coming into
kindergarten at the age of five. They do not know their
letters. They do not know their numbers. They cannot read. They
cannot do math. They cannot write. And they are sitting next to
kids who can, and the kids who can just go faster and faster
and faster, and the kids who cannot go slower and slower and
slower. And we end up with a situation where we have a lot of
disruptions, kids acting out, and we see that every day in our
schools.
I think the other key is clearly spelling out what we
expect kids to know and be able to do in math and science and
English and social studies, have an ability to measure student
progress there, and having great teachers, great teachers in
the classrooms who love kids, who know their stuff, who make
learning fun, make learning relevant to what is going on in the
lives of kids after on.
And then we have different ways to try to create
competition. We have different ways to create competition, and
I have mentioned a couple that seem to work in our State. We
have a variety of ways to engender competition here in the
District of Columbia.
What I would like to do is in this conversation is just
have a chance to figure out why, for kids for whom this program
seems to work, why is it working well and what are some ways we
can make it better. Everything I do, I know I can do better.
Everything we have done in education in Delaware, I know we can
do better and hopefully continue to do better.
But, let us just look at this program in the District of
Columbia. Dr. Lubienski, let me just start with you. I think
this program is going to be reauthorized. I think it is
important that when it is, is that we do it in a way so that it
is going to be better, that it is going to be better. Give us
an idea or two how we can make it better, please.
Mr. Lubienski. Excellent question. I know that there is
some discussion about--in the reauthorization of the program
about how to evaluate that and whether or not you should use
randomized control trials. I think Representative Norton
weighed in on that. Can I suggest that randomized control
trials are seen as being very strong, rigorous experiments that
answer a very narrow question, and so there was talk about
moving toward more quasi-experimental approaches.
Personally, I think that there is value to different types
of approaches for understanding an intervention like this. What
I really would like to see in terms of the evaluation is for
the evaluators also to consider the impacts of the family
background factors and how those are clustered into different
schools. I think research has shown pretty convincingly that it
is not necessarily a voucher or a piece of paper that teaches
kids. It is these other factors, as well, and we are not really
considering those in the evaluations of these programs. So, I
would point in that direction.
Senator Carper. Good. Thanks.
Linda, just give me one idea, one idea from the experience
you have had in school, one change we could make that would
make this program even more effective for a broader range of
kids.
Ms. Catalan. I am going to have to agree. From experience
from students who had complained, actually, about scholarship
programs and programs like these where there was more
background research needed in order to, like, be accepted into
this program, I recently personally, even--I have been through
this. I recently applied for a scholarship program for college
and was denied the scholarship because I go to a private
school, so assuming I have the money to afford for this $41,000
tuition it is just for tuition for Field School. They assumed
immediately after I contacted them that I am able to pay for
this, and I think a lot of background research needs to be----
Senator Carper. OK. Thank you, ma'am.
Mr. Jones, give me one really good idea how to make this
program better, more effective.
Mr. Jones. Well, again, to piggyback, it is looking into
the family background, the family history, of the socioeconomic
condition of the family. I also think that more money should be
put into the program for immersion programs, like language
immersion programs, especially in a primary age, a middle
school age, art immersion programs, things like that. Those
things help benefit the students and make them more rounded and
cultured going forward into high school and into college.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Blaufuss. By the way, it was great being in your
school. Thanks for the warm welcome. It was much appreciated.
Ms. Blaufuss. Thank you. I am going to push my luck and
propose two improvements. One is really continuation of the
existing legislation, and that is to continue funding for
academic support as a piece of the bill, and I know the new
administrator is going to work harder to make sure that money
is actually used. It was not used in the last 5 years, even
though it was part of the bill, and I think it is crucial to
the bill's success.
The second suggestion I would have is to make being
currently enrolled in a private school not be a disqualifier.
To disqualify kids because they are currently enrolled in
private school seems to imply that a family's economic status
will be the same from kindergarten through high school. So, it
assumes that no one is ever going to lose their job, no one's
dad is ever going to die, no one's parent is ever going to
suffer from mental illness. So, to say that kids who are
currently enrolled in private school who otherwise in every way
qualify for the program are disqualified from it, it seems to
me fundamentally against the spirit of what the bill is trying
to accomplish.
Senator Carper. All right. Thanks. Mr. Chavous.
Mr. Chavous. In addition to us as the new administrator
really drilling down and dealing with the transparency issue
and some of the nuts and bolts day-to-day things that they
mentioned, which we think is important, I also think that there
are some carryover funds that could be used to maximize some
scholarships.
We plan on having an aggressive outreach program with
parents. The parent engagement piece is always something that
is put at the end of the priority list. We want to elevate that
so parents can be educated consumers and understand the
responsibility of how to pick the right school for their child
and how to be an advocate for their child, and I think that is
going to make a huge difference, so that parents like Mr. Jones
can make educated choices about any of the options that are
available. But, if we have access to those carryover funds, we
can give more scholarships to this new breed of educated
parents that we hope can take advantage of choice here in the
District.
Senator Carper. Great. Thanks so much.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Booker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BOOKER
Senator Booker. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for
holding this, and I appreciate the work that you are doing in a
bipartisan way to try to advance what I think is important
legislation.
I want to thank all the members of the panel for all of
their extraordinary and enlightening testimony.
Linda, honestly, I have seen many people testify. Many of
them would love just a fraction of the poise and confidence you
showed when you spoke. It is extraordinary. When I was 17, my
biggest fear was speaking in front of people. I would have been
shaking and you looked like a pro, better than many Senators,
so thank you very much.
And, I just want to say that Kevin Chavous, he and I have
been friends for decades now, when we both had very large
Afros---- [Laughter.]
And I just want to thank you, man. You have been a partner
and ally of mine, somebody that has been helping me back in the
days when these issues were not popular at all. So, I am
grateful that you are here.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to start off with something,
because there is too much vilification, in my opinion, in this
movement, especially around Teachers' Unions. There are States
in America right now that are Right to Work States that do not
have strong Teachers' Unions but still have failing schools.
And, to me, we are too focused in on creating an enemy and not
nearly focused enough on what needs to get done, which in this
country that professes to believe in equal opportunity, that
has children across the country pledging allegiance every
single day to this ideal of liberty and justice for all, well,
that is a lie to many kids because they do not get the justice
of a great education.
And, Federal policy over the years has allowed certain
neighborhoods to be drained of their wealth through the Federal
Housing Administration (FHA) policy that has created ghettos
through consciously bigoted Federal actions, that has allowed
certain people to opt out of the public schools.
I listened to Dr. Lubienski talking about--and I had to
scratch my head--about the peer impact on when some kids opt
out and some do not. Well, that is America right now, because
rich and middle-class kids are getting to opt out of the
system. And, so, the current landscape reflects our tolerance
of allowing the wealthy to opt-out of the system, but shrieks
of do not let poor people do it, dear God and when discussion
of extending that privilege to low-income families occurs.
And, so, my point right now is that we must have a focus on
educating all children. I am sick and tired of seeing the
pipeline school-to-person play out ending with sending our
children to prison. In fact, it is eight times more likely for
a kid who does not graduate from high school to be arrested. We
are fueling the biggest bureaucratic growth in government. It
is the prison system, which has gone up 800 percent on the
Federal level because of the failure to educate our kids, to
cultivate their genius. That is unacceptable to me.
And, so, these debates often become about everything but
poor kids getting a shot. And, by the way, these kids are our
children. They are the greatest natural resource this country
has. There are poets and artists and scientists and Senators in
our schools who are not getting a shot because of these choked
systems.
And, so, I am dedicated to the idea that the American
public--public education is a bedrock, fundamental aspect of
this country. It is what makes us a great democracy. And the
fact that we believe that public education should be diverse
and allow poor kids to have choice, to me, that is something I
have been fighting for my entire career.
I am happy to see Eleanor Holmes Norton recognize that
choice in education encompasses both District schools and
charter schools. You know that, Kevin. That sentiment would not
have been heard 5 or 10 years ago. My city, which was recently
recognized by the Brookings Institution--Newark, where I live--
as one of the top cities in America for choice, what has
happened over the 8 years of our choice movement in Newark?
Black children in my city that are attending schools that beat
the State average have increased 300 percent. The data, and the
data from Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO),
which, about this one city, is extraordinary pertaining to the
quality education we are providing when we allow parents like
Gary the greatest power you could have, to choose the destiny
of your child.
And, so, this hearing is something rare I have ever seen
during my time in Washington, where we have a program where
politicians are basically saying, we are not going to cut
something here, one program for poverty, in order to put
something there. We are going to actually increase funding to
District schools. We are going to increase funding to charter
schools. And we are going to increase funding to scholarships.
I wish this Congress was as committed to increasing funding for
poor kids as it is in this little area called this three-prong
approach, Kevin, that you were one of the main architects of
back in the day.
And, so, what my interest is, is making sure that those
choices for children, which I deeply believe should extend to
poor kids in the same manner in which they are entended to rich
kids, that those choices are quality choices, and this is what
I want in America, that there is accountability in our schools.
I do not believe in charter scholarship District schools. I
have a simple way I look at schools, good schools or bad
schools, and the problem with a lot of charter schools is they
do not close. They fail to teach kids at high levels and then
they keep going in perpetuity.
And, so, what we need to have, in my opinion, is a robust
program--if we are going to do this in Washington and deny
Washington residents the right to control their own schools--
look, I
had to deal with that in Newark, having the State take over a
district--but if we are going to deny the right for
Washingtonians to choose their own destiny and design a
program, let us do everything within this program to give poor
kids choice of quality options. That is the urgency that I have
right now.
Now, this bill, and I am going to get to Christopher, if I
have the time, to say there are flaws in it. There are flaws. I
do not understand how you can design a scholarship program,
Kevin, that says some of your kids get about $28,000 per child
and then another system gets only $12,000 per child. That is
shortchanging, in my opinion, a whole bunch of kids.
And, so, if you want to understand why a lot of the
schools--Sidwell Friends, I could name the private schools in
this that, if I had children--may God bless me 1 day and get my
mother off my back---- [Laughter.]
But if I had kids, if I had kids, I would do whatever--I
would be in Gary's camp. I am going to do whatever it takes to
fight to get my children in the best schools possible. This
scholarship program does not allow that because the scholarship
amount is too low.
And, so, I have some questions, Chairman, but I just used
my 7 minutes to talk a little bit, and----
Chairman Johnson. You used them very effectively. I
appreciate it.
Senator Booker. Thank you very much, and I will wait for
another round if I should be so lucky.
Chairman Johnson. I do need to see a picture of you in that
Afro, though. [Laughter.]
I think, quite honestly now, all America wants to see that
Afro.
Senator Booker. If Tim Scott shows his pictures, I will
show mine. [Laughter.]
Chairman Johnson. I do have more questions, so if you stick
around, you will probably get a chance to ask some. Senator
Heitkamp.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HEITKAMP
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This obviously is not an issue that affects my
constituencies much. The underserved constituents in my State
do not have access to a robust private school system, and so,
obviously, it is not an issue that we have confronted. But, I
do have a great deal of sympathy as we look at Native
Americans, who have experienced historically low rates. You all
have talked about dropout rates. The lowest dropout rates in
the country are among Native American students, especially
those in Indian Country. And, so, I share a lot of this passion
and I share a lot of the concern that we have about making sure
all of our schools function, that all of our schools are
utilizing their resources to do the right thing for the
children of America.
We continue to be very challenged in public education, but
one of the concerns that I have is we have just gone through a
rewrite of No Child Left Behind in the U.S. Senate, and in that
rewrite, we were reminded consistently by Senator Lamar
Alexander that we are not the national school board. We are not
the national school board. This is something that should be
left to local choice. This is something that local entities
should make up their mind.
And, I am always troubled in an overarching system with
interference of Congress in local options and local decisions.
Now, recognizing we cannot segregate or separate that
relationship very easily, but I think we can be mindful and
respectful.
I think, Mr. Chavous, you talked a lot about the D.C.
Council not supporting this program any more, and why do you
think that they have taken this position, as a former
Councilman yourself, and what would they do if we just said, it
is up to you guys to decide? What would happen?
Mr. Chavous. Well, first of all, let me just say, Senator,
that yes, most education funding and policy is locally based,
as you indicated. But it is clear, and Senator Booker alluded
to this, that the District and the Federal Government has a
special, unique relationship.
Senator Heitkamp. Yes.
Mr. Chavous. We do not have voting representation, and you
all do sign off on our budget, which is wholly self-generated.
And, so, there are different nuances to it. When Mayor Williams
and I were approached 10 years, 12 years ago about this, it was
to acknowledge the special relationships where there are some
burdens and benefits to being citizens of the District and the
Nation's capital at the same time, and the feeling was, let us
figure out a way to make sure that the Federal Government has a
stake in the Nation's capital. So, that was the genesis for the
partnership----
Senator Heitkamp. Yes, but I think my point is that where I
have heard just wonderful testimony and great stories and
certainly been absolutely charmed by the young woman here, I
also want to make sure that we are respectful of whatever local
governance you do have. And, so, as we kind of look forward,
how do we get everybody--when you were there, this was, yes,
let us do this program. Let us walk together.
Mr. Chavous. Yes.
Senator Heitkamp. And now it seems like we have gotten this
division. How do we bring people back together at the District
level to support one unified program without having that debate
refereed by this Committee?
Mr. Chavous. Well, one is information is power. I think
that even in talking to some of the folks who signed the
letter, they did not realize, for instance, it was a three-
sector strategy. So, if you get rid of the scholarship amount,
you will get rid of the money that goes to D.C. Public Schools
and D.C. Public Charter Schools. I think that you have newer
members who do not understand the history, and we are told by
some activists who are against the program that this is a
voucher program exclusively. They did not understand all of
that.
Senator Heitkamp. Yes.
Mr. Chavous. And, if you also pay close attention, you will
notice that the Mayor and Chairman of the Council did not sign
the letter. The Mayor has in the past signed letters in support
of this program and the Chairman of the Council refused to sign
this letter.
So, I think that once we spend more time talking with the
newer members, because there are several new members in the
last couple years, about what this--the full impact of this
partnership really is, they do not want to lose that money and
they also want to make sure that we do lift all boats. I mean,
I feel confident that we can bring most people together. Now,
there are going to be some, and our Congresswoman is one of
them, who just do not like the program for whatever reason. She
did not like it ten or 12 years ago. She did not like it when a
majority of the Council signed a letter a couple years ago. So,
now with the new members we just have our work to do to educate
people.
Senator Heitkamp. And I think that is a critical piece,
because I was encouraged when Senator Booker talked about how
the Delegate was actually working with his office to improve
it. I think we all believe that there should be higher levels
of accountability. We believe that there should be review of
the GAO report. But, ultimately, what I am looking for is some
kind of broader consensus within the D.C. community, whether it
is the school board or the Council, asking us for what they
need rather than us telling them what to do, because we should
not be your school board. Your community should be your school
board and your school district should be your school board.
I am not philosophically opposed to anything that moves
children ahead. and, so, for me, this is not about philosophy
nearly as much as it is about parental and local control and
making sure that we hear those voices kind of broadly. And when
political leadership that is supposed to represent the local
folks send us mixed messages, it is a tough lift here, because
we do not want to be your school board. I do not want to be
your school board.
Mr. Chavous. No, I appreciate that.
Senator Heitkamp. I want you guys to be the school board.
Mr. Chavous. No, I appreciate that, and then that is why
many of us support statehood, which I expect many of you would
support it for the same reasons. [Laughter.]
Senator Heitkamp. I am sure the Chairman would be glad to
answer that question. [Laughter.]
But, I guess, to the extent that as we proceed with this
bill you can, through your past experience, work to try and
develop a better consensus at the----
Mr. Chavous. Absolutely.
Senator Heitkamp [continuing]. At the city level, at the
school district level, with school leaders, so that you can
come and say this is what--we are not going to make everybody
happen, but this is what works for us and please be respectful
of the decisions----
Mr. Chavous. We are aggressively educating and engaging the
City Council.
Senator Heitkamp. Thank you, and thank you all for your
love of your children, obviously reflected in your advocacy
here, your amazing testimony, Beth. I was moved by all the work
that you are doing. Obviously, we think that you might be
President some day. And, it is important that we still have
kind of an academic look-back, because anyone can come up with
a feel good story, but we need to have a broader perspective,
and so I look forward to working with the D.C. School District.
Mr. Chavous. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator. Remember, we are
trying to concentrate on those areas of agreement. [Laughter.]
There is a fair amount of agreement on this issue.
Senator Heitkamp. Mr. Chairman, I did not raise statehood.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Johnson. You just did. [Laughter.]
Mr. Chavous, just real quick, in terms of numbers, I do not
have the total amount that the District spends on its schools,
but you do some calculations and it is looking like what the
Federal Government is providing in this program is about a
quarter. Is that close, or what is the breakdown----
Mr. Chavous. I am not sure. I know that there is--over the
last 10 years, you all have contributed in this program alone
$239 million. I do not know the total number in terms of other
contributions.
Chairman Johnson. Well, the total amount by your testimony
is $239 million for the public schools, $195 million for
charters, $188 million for the scholarship program----
Mr. Chavous. That is right. That is right.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. So that is $622 million in
total.
Mr. Chavous. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. And if you just take $28,000 times the
85,000 students, that is close to about $2.4 billion. But, it
is a pretty significant chunk that the Federal Government is
contributing.
I want to go to the demand side of this and how much demand
is it and what kind of waiting lists, because I was surprised
by Representative Norton's assertion that there just really is
not that much demand for this.
Looking at Milwaukee, we have 77,000 students enrolled in K
through 12, and because it is a very robust choice program, 33
percent of those--25,000 students enrolled in the program
represents 33 percent of student enrollment. Of those eligible,
it is 42 percent. That is a high level of demand.
Here in the District, you have 85,000 students and you have
1,400 enrolled. I cannot believe there is that big of
difference in terms of the demand for those opportunities.
Mr. Chavous. No.
Chairman Johnson. Can you just kind of speak to that, what
is limiting it?
Mr. Chavous. Yes. Mr. Chairman, we know there is demand,
but people do not know what they do not know. So, part of it is
we have to do a better job of letting people know these
opportunities exist. For the average parent out there, and Gary
Jones knows this, they do not even make the distinction between
public, private, and charter. It is just, as Cory Booker said,
it is about good schools.
We know when the program first started, where there was
more aggressive marketing by the administrator, more
information in public housing and community centers, the demand
grew. But over the past several years when there have been
challenges, as the GAO report alluded to, with the previous
administrator, when there were challenges in terms of
relationships with the Department of Education and how many
scholarships can be let out, the enrollment period, making sure
that the sign-up period was consistent with the sign-up period
for charter schools, oftentimes, there was a truncated schedule
in terms of----
Chairman Johnson. We make it very difficult.
Mr. Chavous. It made it very difficult.
Chairman Johnson. Yes.
Mr. Chavous. But, we are confident that with our aggressive
outreach to let people know that the demand is there and the
proof is in the pudding, there is a demand of over 8,000 on the
charter school list, and so we know that parents want more. We
just have to make sure that they know that there is more out
there that is available for them.
Chairman Johnson. In the State of Wisconsin, when I was
involved in the education system, I know we had an open
enrollment period, where if you were going to public school,
you can choose whichever public school you want to go to. You
had an open enrollment period, but it was in the middle of
February, and trust me, nobody knew about it. It was only a
couple of weeks long, if I recall.
Mr. Chavous. Yes.
Chairman Johnson. Mr. Jones, can you speak to that.
Mr. Jones. Well, I can say that our city leaders, they
promote the charters more than they would the OSP private
schools and parochial schools, and that is why a lot of parents
do not know about it. Now, from my experience, because people
have seen me at some of these rallies and have seen me speak, I
have had people in my neighborhoods and communities walk up to
me and they are asking me how to enroll their children in the
OSP programs. When I re-enroll--every year, you have to re-
enroll your children in the program--there are lines going
literally around the block and down the street because people
want better choices for their children.
So, I do not understand why Ms. Norton is saying that there
is not a high demand for it. I know that people in Southeast
Washington, DC. are wanting to get their children into better
schools. And, like I said, it seems like our city leaders are
more focused on charters as opposed to the private school
sector.
Chairman Johnson. I was pretty moved by your discussion of
how you have one child, one daughter, that has the voucher, the
other one that was already in private school so she does not
qualify. So, then--we sent our kids to the same school and it
was enormously beneficial that you had siblings in the school
helping each other out. I mean, I do not want to break out
those families. What is the rationale if you qualify--if one of
your children qualified for the Opportunity Scholarship but the
other one does not? I mean, what is the rationale for that? I
know Ms. Blaufuss talked about that disqualification. Can you
speak to that? Any rationale for that?
Mr. Jones. What was explained to me 2 years ago when I
first signed my daughters up for it was that the older one
would probably get the scholarship, but because the program was
a 5-year program, they had to do the assessments, the younger
one would have to wait until that 5-year period before she
could become eligible to receive a scholarship, which to me it
just did not make any sense. So, that is the only reason that
was given to us, is that you have to wait until this program is
done and it is up for reauthorization and we have to do the
assessments and then she can qualify for it.
Chairman Johnson. So, right now, you are working two jobs
to make sure that your children are together in the same
school----
Mr. Jones. Yes.
Chairman Johnson [continuing]. To have that benefit of that
sibling support system.
Mr. Jones. Yes. What it was, I had the choice to make. Last
year, my youngest daughter, Tiffany, she could have stayed in
DCPS while Sabirah was, like, a quarter of a mile away at St.
Thomas More. But, I mean, logistically, trying to get both kids
to school at the same--on time, it was just wearing on me and
my wife. So, I just made the decision. I was, like forget it. I
will just have to pay out of pocket and do what I have to do.
It is not like I did not like their public school when they
were there, but because of what is going on with the school
system, they kept closing schools, they were consolidating
schools. Our school did not get closed, but it got consolidated
and the principal was promised by the chancellor all these
resources to help accommodate this influx of students. Well, it
did not happen. So, I was a parent advocate for DCPS and I am
fighting for resources and books and things that was promised
to us by the chancellor and that left me, like with an option.
Do I keep my child in this organized chaos, what I call it, or
do I move her and pay out of pocket for it?
I felt bad, because my children have always been honor roll
students, but in Tiffany's fourth grade year, they got new
teachers, young teachers who were not used to teaching kids in
the inner city. You have 39 students in one class with one
teacher and no teacher's aide, and she started to struggle. And
I just could not afford to let my baby stay in that situation.
So, when fifth grade came around, I said, I am going to put you
in St. Thomas More. I took a second job to pay the $6,000-plus
tuition.
And I am glad I did, because in the fifth grade, it was
even worse. There was still an influx of students because of
the consolidation, and instead of having two fifth grade
teachers, one quit the second day. So, the school was
scrambling around trying to find another educator for this
class.
And, Tiffany has continued to progress in St. Thomas More.
One of the things I love about it is because they get that--how
do I say that--their spiritual aspect to it, they give the
academic access to it, they also, like, when they do struggle,
it is not that they come in and they are flying high in every
class. They give them tutoring after school. The class size is
somewhere between 12 to 15. They get one-on-one instruction
when they need it. So, I just had to do what I had to do to
make sure that they have the best opportunity to go far,
through college and in life.
Chairman Johnson. Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for
being a great parent.
Real quick, Dr. Lubienski. We started this journey, this
Committee, with a field hearing in Milwaukee at St. Marcus
Lutheran School on July 20, and we had an expert kind of like
yourself in terms of trying to study the outcomes, which is
very difficult. I mean, it is just very difficult to measure
all these things.
But, I look at, as Ms. Blaufuss talked about, just choice
is good. Kind of keep it simple. The fact that graduation rates
elevate from 67 percent to 91 percent. And then how do you
measure what Mr. Jones was just talking about, that nurturing,
that safety, the moral teaching, the values teaching? How do
you measure that?
Mr. Lubienski. That is an excellent question, and parents
are measuring that by making choices for the types of schools
that match their preferences for those types of things.
I would want to caution about the comparison of the
graduation rates from the voucher program and the D.C. Public
Schools in general, or Milwaukee Public Schools in general. You
are looking at two different populations, and so social
scientists can say there is a likelihood that many of those
students would have graduated no matter which type of school
they went to.
But, if I could respond to the issue about choice and
choice
for disadvantaged students, I mean, that is an excellent
question. I really appreciate what Linda had to say. If not for
her parents--and that is something to consider. Not everybody
has parents like that, certainly. Choice can be a good thing.
As I said, I think there is a strong moral argument for that.
But is it leading to better outcomes or access to better
schools? And, the research is much more equivocal about that.
Last year, there was a study out from the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development using Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA) data. Countries that
have higher levels of competition in their schools, more
choices, are doing no better in terms of academic achievement,
and schools in those countries that are more competitive and
are based on choice are doing no better than other schools in
those countries. However, they did find out that there are
greater levels of segregation associated with choice. So, I
think that we have to be concerned about some of those
unintended outcomes, as well.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Doctor. Senator Carper.
Senator Carper. Thanks very much.
I am a veteran, Vietnam veteran, came back from Southeast
Asia, third tour, moved from California to Delaware, enrolled
in an M.B.A. program and got $250 a month to go to school,
grateful for every dollar of it. Today, veterans coming back
from Afghanistan, if they served 3 years in our military, they
can go to school--they can go to Rutgers free, tuition paid
for, everything is paid. University of Delaware, University of
Wisconsin, tuition paid for, books, fees, all that stuff, a
$1,500 a month housing allowance, as well.
You have a bunch of for-profit, and some of the for-profit
colleges and universities in this country are very good, are
very good. Some of them are not. They are diploma mills. They
are preparing students for jobs that do not exist. They spend
more money in recruiting students, a lot of them G.I.s, than
they actually spend in training and preparing them for work.
We have a rule under the Federal law. It is called the 90/
10 rule. Basically, it says that no more than 90 percent of a--
if you are a for-profit college and university's revenues can
come from the Federal Government. There is a loophole that
allows some of them to get up to 100 percent. And if you look
at the number of schools that are not doing a good job--some
are even shut down now around the country because they were not
doing a very good job preparing folks for gainful employment. A
lot of that can be traced right back to that situation.
Here is my question. I am told we have some schools in this
program whose revenues come from, I think 100 percent from
vouchers from the Federal Government, 100 percent. The reason
why we have the 90/10 rule is it says there have to be some
market forces. These schools have to be good enough, these
colleges and universities have to be good enough that somebody
is going to spend their own money or work or whatever rather
than just having the Federal taxpayer pay for it.
Do you think that it is appropriate for the Federal
Government really to fund 100 percent of the cost of these
schools through Federal tuition? Go ahead, please. Beth.
Ms. Blaufuss. I think that in looking at how one measures
how the Federal dollars are used and the kinds of institutions
that are taking them, I would ask us to keep our eye on the
ball, which is student achievement and student educational
attainment, rather than looking at the nature of the
institutions where that is happening. I think the measure of a
school should be the outcomes of the kids in it.
So, I think my understanding is that some of the numbers
that get thrown around, and Kevin may be able to share some of
those numbers about the particular institutions, I am
particularly wary of programs like, or amendments like the one
that Delegate Norton proposed with putting what seems to me
like an arbitrary cap on the number of OSP students at a
school. It seems like the measure of a school is the students,
not the nature of the institution.
Having said that, all of the schools should be financially
responsible and should have good financial oversight, which I
think the regulator will make sure happens. So, I would just
caution that the ultimate measure should be the kids.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chavous.
Mr. Chavous. Delegate Norton talked about the voucher mills
and a lot of these schools popped up right after this bill
passed. That is not the case. It is my understanding there are
only two schools that emerged, new schools, after this bill
passed. I think the vast majority of the schools in the
program, and we are working on the numbers now, would clearly
fall within the 90/10 rule and probably even less. I think most
of the schools--I do not know of any of the schools that are
100 percent, but I will have to check on that. I just am not
sure. But, I think that that is an overstated impression. We
can get you the exact numbers of the percentage of the
schools--the number of schools and the percentage of kids who
are on scholarship and how that looks in terms of their overall
population.
But, I also think that as we have seen in--what I do not
want, I do not want us to be precipitous about putting limits
on the ability to recruit great schools to service the distinct
populations that we need to have served. In Indiana, for
instance, where they have a voucher program that is the fastest
growing in the country, have 30,000 students and it is growing,
it is now outpacing charter school growth, they are very
aggressive in finding schools that can serve underprivileged
children, that serve children with certain acute needs, so that
they can bring them in and offer those services up.
And, so, as Beth has said, they are not as focused on the
percentages, but making sure that they are accredited, they are
solid programs, and that they will help fill in the gap where
there is a shortfall in that particular jurisdiction.
Senator Carper. OK. Same question, very briefly, please.
Mr. Jones, do you want to just very briefly----
Mr. Jones. Yes. From my perspective as a parent, these pop-
up schools that Ms. Norton is saying, again, I believe they are
overstated. I know there had been a lot of pop-up charters, and
again, this is from my own experience. There have been charters
that are notorious for bringing in unaccredited teachers. They
come in for one or 2 years. There is a lot of attrition going
on with the teachers. And some of these schools have just been
used as a prop to gain money for the individuals behind the
schools, and that is a problem.
I think that because they have so much autonomy, there is
really not real genuine oversight to see what their academic
achievement really is, whereas with schools that are in the OSP
program, again, schools that I named earlier in my testimony,
they have a long history of accountability and being accredited
and being successful. It is the charter schools, really, that
have been hurting, in my opinion, the D.C. Public Schools as
well as the OSP program.
Senator Carper. All right. Thanks.
Linda, do you care to comment on this?
Ms. Catalan. I am very biased about this, because speaking
from the Field School, the Field School is a very wealthy
school and the reason why my family, along with the scholarship
that D.C. Opportunity gives me, I do not pay any of the tuition
for Field, and I just personally have always wanted this to
spread out throughout other public schools and charter schools,
like it was mentioned before, of having--because I know that,
definitely, there are schools that I visited, even, looking at
the kids, looking at the parents, because, well, of course, the
parents are the ones with the money and it is not evenly spread
throughout the schools, and I think that is one of the most
basic, important things that every school should need.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you.
Dr. Lubienski, same question.
Mr. Lubienski. Thank you. I do not have a position on where
the cap should be or if there should be a cap. I can tell you
that the figures that are often cited, for example, 82 percent
of the parents are satisfied with their children's schools, are
not very trustworthy because they are surveying parents who are
currently in the schools and not the dissatisfied ones who have
left. So, you have to take that into account.
That said, recent research from Milwaukee, for example,
shows that parent satisfaction levels are lower when there is a
higher proportion of voucher students at a given school, and
you can make of that what you want.
Senator Carper. All right. Good. Thanks so much.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Booker.
Senator Booker. Thank you, and again, I just want to say I
am thrilled that we are potentially making impactful investment
as a Congress within this program. Again, if you want to talk
about student achievement, dealing with some of the issues of
poverty, it would be nice that we could fund programs like
prenatal care which as I see the Doctor shaking his head in
affirmation, would ensure all the kids in D.C., in New Jersey,
and cities across the country got access to prenatal care.
Models such as nurse-family partnerships, which entail nurse's
visiting homes in the last trimester and first 2 years of
infancy, demonstrates incredible data in improving student
achievement.
I wish we could be funding many other effective programs.
The unfortunate thing, however, is that our failure to support
things that work means that our teachers in public schools,
District schools, charter schools, all have to deal with
challenges that they should not have to deal with, and that is
unfortunate that we are straining the capacity of our schools
and our police officers because we are failing as a society to
support things that actually work.
But in terms of this program, there are a number of changes
that we have sought to include in a reauthorization. Within one
year of the enactment of the law, schools must pursue
accreditation. That seems to me fair. Kevin, is that fair?
Mr. Chavous. Absolutely. And we have been working with
Senator Feinstein on that.
Senator Booker. OK. No, I appreciate that, and that, to me,
is something that is really important.
Schools shall have annual reporting, report to parents of
D.C. OSP students and college acceptance, vocational--again,
just requiring more reporting. In other words, I have seen what
some of the District schools have to deal with in terms of
accountability and reporting and accreditation. That should
apply, to some degree, to the schools that are participating in
the program, correct?
Mr. Chavous. Yes.
Senator Booker. Kevin, thank you.
And then the issue I brought up earlier, Kevin, if you can
just comment on that for me, about the amount of the
scholarship, because that seems to me something that is very
frustrating to me, because we call this a choice program, but
it does not seem like the kids with only $12,000, $12,500, get
all that much choice. And there are a lot of schools that might
be participating in the program if that was closer to what the
per pupil expenditure was of about $28,400. And, one of the
reasons, I think, one of the collateral consequences of a low
rate means that those schools that bend over backward to allow
those kids to come in end up with the very high percentages,
where maybe you would not have such a high percentage
concentrated in certain schools if more kids had more robust
choices higher scholarship amounts would produce. Could you
address that for me, Kevin?
Mr. Chavous. Sure, and thank you so much for your support
over the years and your friendship.
Senator Booker. Yes.
Mr. Chavous. So, I will say that, look, we would like to
see bigger and larger amounts. There was an increase when it
was reauthorized several years ago which was very helpful. And
if we had a larger appropriation, yes, we could bring more
schools in the program.
And I do want to, frankly, give a shout out and a thank you
to those schools that have higher tuition rates, they still
take kids and they scholarship the rest. I mean, I think those
schools have shown a real commitment.
So, we would like to see larger scholarship amounts. It
would help us attract more of the high-end schools, and a
number of those high-end schools, when they do bring in our
students, they also bring a full investment of tutorial
services, mentoring. It is like they really welcome those
students into the family, and she has done an amazing job of
that, so that there is no stigma attached to them coming in, as
we have seen.
Senator Booker. Right.
Mr. Chavous. So, I think that would be----
Senator Booker. No, I appreciate it, and I appreciate, Ms.
Blaufuss, what you were saying, because it resonates with me,
this idea that government funding large percentages of these
schools, well, with regard to charters and District schools
whose government fund the whole thing, and without that
funding, those schools would not exist. So, the focus should be
on our children, on parents, and on the performance,
ultimately, of those schools, as I think Dr. Lubienski gets to,
and that is really, for me, what I care about. The quality of
the education received should predominate our discussion first
and foremost empowering those schools to achieve.
Again, we disempower public education every day in America
by sending kids to school who are nutritionally unfit to learn,
who do not have mental health issues addressed, and then you
have teachers in public schools, District schools, and private
schools who have to deal with all kind of things before they
even get to reading, writing, and arithmetic. I just want to
keep emphasizing that.
But, I just want to, real quick, there has been criticism,
and I think you have had some, for the evaluation of this
program, and I think we should figure out a way to evaluate the
program, to create as best as you can a control group. It is
hard to do that, you would admit, in a program in which you
would have to deny scholarships to some people in order to
create that control group, correct?
Mr. Lubienski. Yes. It is similar to medical trials, where
there is a group of people that are in the experiment and a
group that is not and they do not necessarily know which group
there are in. Here, in this case, they do know if they are
accepted to the voucher program or not.
I would say that these effects, these types of programs in
medical trials, when there is evidence that they are having a
substantial impact, it is considered unethical to deny
treatment to the control group.
Senator Booker. Right.
Mr. Lubienski. That is not the case here. We have not
reached anywhere near that level of evidence. Most of the
evidence suggests that there is not an impact.
Senator Booker. But, would you agree with me that if the
scholarship amount was more and kids could go to higher
performing schools--schools with long track records of success
that are not accepting our scholarship kids right now, that it
is most likely that those kids would do better, right?
Mr. Lubienski. The best predictor, or one of the best--as
was said earlier, family--parents----
Senator Booker. The parental----
Mr. Lubienski [continuing]. Interest is very important, but
so is the, again, the peer group or the social characteristics
of the school that the child is learning in. That is an
excellent predictor of it, regardless of whether it is a
public, charter, or private school.
Senator Booker. Right.
Mr. Lubienski. So, yes. I think taking kids and giving them
access to these types of schools would be beneficial. But,
again, I would caution you to think about that is removing--I
mean, you are clustering higher achieving, motivated peers in
some places and that you are taking them from elsewhere. So,
that is going to have, also, negative impacts.
Senator Booker. But, that is not persuasive to me because
we have created a society that allows segregation--New Jersey,
for African-Americans, the fifth most segregated State in the
Nation, and a lot of that is a family led battle. My parents
were looking for quality public schools, so we had to get the
Fair Housing Council, go through court proceedings just to
battle into a neighborhood so I could go to the schools that I
went to. And, so, that is not persuasive to me. In other words,
we are going to punish those children who might have the
wherewithal or parents when we do not do that for others. I am
sorry. You can respond to that, if you want.
Mr. Lubienski. I did not mean to say that we are punishing
those children. I am saying we are, in fact, punishing children
who are left behind whose parents do not care enough to make
the choice. When they are concentrated in schools where all the
affluent and more motivated peers have left, those are called
sink schools oftentimes, and I have--those children are
penalized.
Senator Booker. Right, but that does not mean that policy
within those schools--I have seen so-called sink schools in my
own city that, because of changes within those public schools,
do extraordinarily well. There are turnaround schools that make
incredible gains. So, that is not an excuse to just give up on
those children.
Mr. Lubienski. I would not at all advocate we should give
up on them. But, I would suggest that most of the turnaround
cases we have seen, there tends to be a socioeconomic
explanation for that. For example, people have pointed to some
high-poverty schools that have actually succeeded and beat the
odds. Closer inspection turns out that they are near a campus
where many of the parents are graduate students. They are low-
income at that point, but the parents are really focused on
education. So, those are things that----
Senator Booker. So, if Kevin's work was able to address the
accreditation issues, which he is addressing, so we have more
transparency into what is going on in those schools, if Kevin's
work, thanks to increased scholarship amounts, helps kids get
more diversity of schools where they could actually be in
better schools, if Kevin's work on the accountability measures
within those schools also helps to improve--really, it sounds
to me that your biggest concern about this program, correct me
if I am wrong, is just the fact that when you, like a charter
school might and like a so-called voucher school might, taking
one of those kids out hurts--your argument is it is hurting the
District school, not because it is taking money away, because
in this case it is not, it is new money, but you are saying it
is hurting the school because of the peer effect. That would be
your biggest argument against the program?
Mr. Lubienski. I am not arguing against the program. I am
saying that is something that policymakers need to consider,
that there are often costs involved, and this is, again, from
the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development
(OECD) report. They talk about benefits and costs being
unevenly distributed. As more affluent parents leave these
schools, that does have a negative implication for the peer
effects for the schools and for the students who are left
behind.
Senator Booker. Right, and have you taken time to study
what is happening in Newark at all?
Mr. Lubienski. I am aware of Newark and I am aware of the
CREDO studies, as well, and there are certainly success stories
like Newark around there. There is a new book out about Newark
which I have not had the chance to read yet. But, I have gone
around the country. I talk with different policymakers, and
they are quite happy to talk about, I am from this city and we
are doing well in terms of charter schools.
But, overall, the CREDO studies from earlier suggested
about, I think it was 17 percent of the charter schools were
performing above statistically--or demographically comparable
public schools, and there are reasons to think that that number
is actually inflated. Twice as many were actually performing at
a level beneath demographically comparable public schools, and
the rest were a wash. So, for every Newark, there is an Ohio or
a Michigan where charter schools are pretty bad.
Senator Booker. Right. And I guess my point, the last point
I will make, because my time has expired, is that there are
enough examples of what is working, and the goal here is to
learn from that and constantly work to make things better for
our public schools. And to me, that is what is happening in
Washington, DC. They have made mistakes in the program in the
past and they are working to try to continue to make it better.
And, so, I am grateful for both sides of the aisle, Mr.
Chairman, working to again deal with some of the mistakes that
were made, control for some of the bad things, in my opinion,
that might have happened in the past, really, and chart a
course forward that works not just for the kids fortunate
enough to get a scholarship, but really to focus on all three
sectors within Washington, DC. and to see them improve.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Senator Booker. We have just
got a couple minutes left on the vote.
I do ask unanimous consent that a written statement from
Dr. Patrick Wolf, distinguished Professor of Education Policy
at the University of Arkansas,\1\ and a written statement from
the Government Accountability Office, be included in the
record.\2\ Without objection, so ordered.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Patrick Wolf appears in the
Appendix on page 101.
\2\ The prepared statement from the Government Accountability
Office appears in the Appendix on page 82.
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Chairman Johnson. We really do want to thank all of our
witnesses. We obviously wish you all the best, but Linda, you
are an extraordinary young woman. We wish you all the best. You
are going to take advantage of this opportunity and we wish you
well.
With that, the hearing record will remain open for the next
15 days, until November 19, 5 p.m., for the submission of
statements and questions for the record.
Again, thank you all for your time, for your thoughtful
testimony, and your thoughtful answers to our questions.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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