WASHINGTON, D.C.
Four congressional Republicans joined U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Tuesday to unveil a new initiative to provide $4,000 scholarships to at-risk, K-12 youth who want to leave failing public schools for private education.
America’s Opportunity Scholarships would go to students from public schools that have failed to make progress in six years under benchmarks of the No Child Left Behind Act. Families could receive $4,000 to help offset private school tuition or $3,000 for supplemental after-school or tutoring programs.
“This is about giving low-income families whose children are stuck in low-performing schools the same opportunities as other families,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. More than six in 10 public school parents say they have transferred their child to a different school or moved to another neighborhood or district to find better education.
“This offers a way out for students whose families don’t have the money for tuition or the luxury of moving,” Alexander said.
The bill proposed by Alexander, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Reps. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., and Sam Johnson, R-Tex., would provide $100 million as an initial down payment on these scholarships. Funds would flow competitively to states, school districts and nonprofit organizations for children attending the lowest-performing schools.
Spellings said the initiative would build on the success of a federally funded scholarship program in Washington, D.C., that provided at-risk students with funds to attend private schools. “We’ve already seen the power of choice in Washington, D.C.,” Spellings said at the news conference unveiling the initiative.
