Jon Kyl, July 25, 2003

With a little over a month left of summer, most of us with kids or grandkids are just beginning to think about the upcoming school year. Most parents’ biggest concerns are simple things like buying new school clothes or getting the right supplies.

Parents in the District of Columbia hope that plaster from crumbling classroom ceilings won’t fall on kids’ heads again. That someone’s fixed fire doors that threatened to fall from their hinges a few years ago. They wonder if basic textbooks will arrive on time (last year, some children waited five weeks for math books). Most of all, they fervently hope that their kids finally learn how to read (only 10 % of all D.C. fourth graders in the public schools can read proficiently).

These are the kinds of concerns that kids in failing schools face every year. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see the great strides being taken across the country to give parents more educational options for our children.

The current "one-size-fits-all" public school system has benefited millions of children, but also failed millions of children. The chronic crisis in the District of Columbia schools continues to baffle "experts" in government who think the solution to every problem is more money. According to the Heritage Foundation, per pupil funding in the District - over $11,000 per student per year - is the highest in the nation. Teacher salaries are, on average, $47,049 - behind just two states. Meanwhile, D.C. public-school students routinely rank near the bottom in educational achievement by almost every measure.

Significant amount of money spent in the District are wasted by a corrupt bureaucracy. National Public Radio reported that District "[s]chool officials allegedly had been using money marked for repairs and textbooks to hire as many as 700 unqualified friends and relatives."

In other instances, the problem is misplaced priorities. One junior high school near Capitol Hill, for example, had enough money to place 20 computers in every classroom. As the Washington Post reported, "There are 20 in each of the school's four technology labs, and there is a machine for almost every teacher. Even the nurse's office has a computer." Meanwhile, 83% of the school’s students can’t even read.

The last year has seen historic progress in efforts to give parents more educational choices. Last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that vouchers were constitutional removed the last legal hurdle to enacting more school-choice programs across the country.

Voucher programs currently in effect in places like Cleveland, Milwaukee, and the State of Florida have proven highly popular to parents. By most measures, they’ve also improved student performance.

Increasingly, these results have caused long-time opponents of school-choice programs to reconsider their views. The superintendent of public schools in Milwaukee, for example, ultimately became a champion of the city’s voucher program, saying that competition helped increase public school performance and bring innovations to the curriculum.

In a major recent development in the District of Columbia, Mayor Anthony Williams, a Democrat, recently reversed his vocal opposition to vouchers to endorse President Bush’s school-choice initiative for the nation’s capital.

Predictably, the mayor was quickly attacked for his "betrayal" of public schools. But critics are finding it harder to stop a tide that is rising. Even the Washington Post credited the mayor for taking "a politically courageous position in backing school choice, given where his party stands on the issue. He is already being accused by critics . . . of supporting the administration's voucher initiative while the city's publicly accountable schools are ‘underfunded.’ That accusation is both unfair and untrue."

Just last week, another prominent Democrat changed her position and enlisted in the voucher movement.

"Ultimately this issue is not about ideology or political correctness," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California. "It is about providing a new opportunity for good education, which is the key to success. Unless a youngster has learned the fundamentals of education, he or she will find it extremely difficult when older to find work in the competitive marketplace."

These newfound expressions of support are extremely welcome. One day in the not too distant future, perhaps more parents in our most impoverished communities will be able to look forward to a new school year without wondering whether the buildings will crumble or if their kids will ever get the chance to learn.

Jon Kyl is a Republican senator from Arizona.