Democrats Limit Future Financing for Washington Voucher Program

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WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats have put conditions on future federal financing for a small school voucher program here, and they are urging the schools chancellor to prepare the public schools to re-enroll, in fall 2010, some 1,700 students currently attending private schools at taxpayer expense.

Republican lawmakers contend that the conditions that were quietly inserted into a huge spending bill this week were an effort by Democrats to kill the nation’s only federally financed voucher program.

Last year, a Congressionally mandated review of the program by Department of Education researchers concluded that there were no significant differences between the test scores of students who received a voucher and those who applied but, not receiving one, attended public schools instead.

Parents of students taking part said they believed that the private schools their children attended were safer than public schools, the study found. But the voucher students themselves rated their school experiences no more highly than did children attending neighborhood schools, the study found.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/education/28voucher.html?th&emc=th