Speech against school vouchers

Editor's note: This is a transcript from the U.S. House of Representatives on Sept. 5, 2003, when Rep. Chris Bell spoke passionately against a private school voucher plan in the District of Columbia Appropriations act of 2004.
Mr. [CHRIS] BELL... Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the amendment, hopeful that we will pass the Norton amendment and not engage in what I think most charitably can be described as a giant cop-out.

It saddens me that we have reached a point in this Nation's history when so many people simply want to throw up their hands and suggest that the only way that we can solve the problems facing public school education in the United States is to send more and more children to private schools, forgetting that what has separated the United States of America from other countries throughout the world is the fact that our forefathers made a commitment to public school education, deciding that children, regardless of financial status, would have free access to a quality public school education.

I serve on the Committee on Government Reform. I listened to the debate there, and I am listening to the debate here. It is very similar, where once again the proponents of this voucher measure suggest that the only way to give parents in Washington, D.C. choice is through private school vouchers. Mr. Chairman, that is simply false. And if my colleagues do not believe me, all they have to do is look at the D.C. public school Web site, where it talks about the out-of-boundary policy, the out-of-boundary application process, discretionary transfer, is for parents or guardians who wish to apply for permission to enroll their children in D.C. PS schools other than their neighborhood school.

The Washington Post, May 20, 2003: ``Throughout the Washington area there are multiple options for parents seeking alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools.'' The Federal No Child Left Behind law stipulates that if a neighborhood school underperforms for 2 consecutive years, parents may transfer their child to another school. D.C. is doing it the way it should be done, by offering parents a choice through the public school system.

I can say that that is the way it is to be done because I come from a city, the city of Houston, that improved its public school system by using public school choice and other measures, a city where in the 1980s many wanted to throw up their hands and say you cannot afford to send your child to the Houston Independent School District; you have to send your child to a private school so that they can get an adequate education. But some community leaders, thankfully, were not willing to accept that argument. They were not willing to simply cop out and throw up their hands. They decided we had to do something about our public education system, so they did implement programs like public school choice and charter schools and called for more local control.

So much improvement has been seen in the Houston Independent School District, so much improvement that a Republican President, George Bush, decided that the superintendent who had overseen most of that improvement, Rod Paige, should serve as the Secretary of Education in his administration. And private school vouchers had absolutely no role in the improvement of Houston public schools.

Then we hear the argument that moving money out of the D.C. public schools and into a private school voucher program will have no real impact; that money does not really play a role in the performance of public schools. How ludicrous is that? Schools, teachers, books. Everybody realizes they all cost money, a lot of money. And there are no private schools that I am aware of who are asking for less money. They are constantly asking the parents of their children for money, and they are constantly calling on private foundations for more donations.

So let us not pretend this voucher bill is not going to have a profound financial impact on D.C. public schools, and let us also not pretend, let us also not pretend that this voucher measure is just about D.C. schools. Because I have listened to that argument as well; that this is a D.C. problem and let D.C. try this because it will not impact anyone else. If I truly believed that, perhaps I would not feel so passionately about this measure, but I do not.

I do think this will start us on a slippery slope. And I hate that argument because it is used and abused here. And there is no one in this Chamber who cannot look at a mole hill and see a mountain instead and suggest that with every issue we are starting down a slippery slope. But in this particular case I do believe that is what we are looking at. I think the proponents of vouchers in this Nation, seeing that they had failed in passing vouchers in any sort of broad-ranged manner, want to do it on an incremental basis starting with D.C., and trying to gather some favorable statistics, like you can always do, and then spreading it from State to State, city to city, until finally we have more and more children enrolled in private schools.

Mr. Chairman, that brings me back to where I started, a cop-out, a giant cop-out, the wrong road to go down, a path that I hope we will not start on here today.