[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 90 (Monday, July 8, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H4338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                NO VOUCHERS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor because a bill has just 
been introduced to impose vouchers on the District of Columbia. The 
Congress had the opportunity to impose vouchers on itself when H.R. 1 
was here, the President's Leave No Child Behind bill. Instead, it 
defeated a voucher proposal 273 to 155; 68 Republicans joined 204 
Democrats. It was not even close.
  Further, there have been 20 referenda on vouchers, all of them 
defeated, most recently in California and Michigan. Not only were they 
defeated overwhelmingly by almost three-quarters of the population in 
each State but the people of color, minorities, voted even more 
overwhelmingly against vouchers. In D.C. we had our own voucher vote in 
the 1980s: 89 percent against, 11 percent for.
  What we are asking for in the Nation's capital is the same choices in 
educating our children that each and every Member of this body has 
insisted upon already for her own district and in her own State; and do 
not get me wrong, I do not believe a child can be in the first grade 
but once. So I strongly believe in choices and alternatives to public 
schools. The District deserves applause for its efforts on choice 
because our own efforts far outdo the efforts of any Member of this 
body. Applause, not punishment, for the choices we have made.
  What are our alternatives? First, we have more charter schools in the 
District of Columbia per capita than any other district. Fourteen 
percent of our children go to public charter schools. No other Member's 
district even approaches this percentage of its children in charter 
schools.
  Second, a D.C. child can go out of her own ward to any public school 
in the District of Columbia. We had children every day going from the 
poorest wards in 7th and 8th across to more wealthy wards, Ward 3, for 
example.
  Third, I have strongly supported the work of the Washington 
scholarship fund, a private organization that provides scholarships, 
mostly to Catholic schools, using private money. I mean that that 
effort using private money is precisely the way to support our 
children.
  Fourth, D.C. closes schools where it is not up to standard and then 
reopens them under new leadership. We have done that with nine schools 
this year with remarkable results.
  It is ironic that this bill would come up at this time. Today's 
Washington Times has an editorial: ``D.C. Schools Make Headway.'' It is 
an editorial from a newspaper that has been fiercely critical of the 
D.C. public schools. It opens by saying: ``Preliminary test data show 
that D.C. teachers appear to be teaching and students appear to be 
learning,'' and it cites statistics. Fifty percent of the children 
improved in math and reading. Did they do as well in my colleagues' 
districts? Children in the most economically deprived neighborhoods 
improved 20 percent. Did my colleagues' economically deprived children 
do as well?
  All of our charter schools are accountable. We can close charter 
schools, and have closed three this year, when they are not doing as 
well with our children. We can close public schools, and we closed nine 
this year, reopened them and they have done much better under new 
leadership. We can impose the same requirements on charter public 
schools as we do on other schools, and those requirements are very 
stiff. We cannot do that particularly to religious schools because they 
must not be accountable to the government in the practice of their 
religion.
  I want to be clear about where I stand on the D.C. public schools. I 
am a proud graduate of the D.C. public schools, but I am not an 
apologist for them. I am proud of how they are improving. They are not 
nearly good enough; but by voting against the bill that has been 
introduced, my colleagues will be voting against choices others have 
made for their districts, not voting against choice.
  We already have multiple choices in the District of Columbia, 
sufficient choices, so that I invite other Members to look at how to 
provide choices when their own people have voted against vouchers. 
There are other ways to acquire and to get choices. We would very much 
appreciate being allowed to make our own choices the way my colleagues' 
districts have insisted upon making their own choices.
  Read today's Washington Times: ``D.C. Schools Make Headway.'' Add to 
what my colleagues read. Respect the democratic choices of the citizens 
of the District of Columbia who are American citizens, entitled to 
their free choices, in the same way that my colleagues' own 
constituents are.

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