School vouchers to surface in massive spending bill

BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer Monday, November 17, 2003
LA Times
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(11-17) 13:45 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Republican Senate leaders plan to force a vote this week on the nation's first federally funded school voucher experiment, tucking the program into broader spending legislation that would be politically difficult for Democrats to block. With the Senate working this week to finish business for the year, the GOP majority is moving to an expected approach: fold the voucher plan and the capital city budget into an enormous spending bill for education, agriculture, housing and many other areas. The move would likely force Democrats to accept vouchers or reject the budgets of entire agencies.

The strategy, confirmed by congressional aides and lobbyists familiar with House and Senate negotiations, is expected to lead to a vote by Friday.

Critics, who include the teachers unions and some school officials, say vouchers strip money from public schools and funnel it to private schools that face little accountability for improving achievement. "The voucher proponents have been reduced to hiding vouchers into a large, omnibus spending package because they couldn't pass the matter in the Senate," said Joan Wodiska, lobbyist for the National School Boards Association. "This shouldn't be railroaded into law."