Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Reauthorization Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, today, I will vote against H.R. 10, which would continue a flawed program that pursues a partisan ideology at the expense of a child's quality education.
This bill would reauthorize Washington, D.C.'s private school voucher program, the only program in the country using federal money to send children to private and religious schools. The SOAR voucher program was a five year pilot set to expire in 2008. Despite four studies by the Department of Education and two General Accountability Office (GAO) reports concluding that the program wasn't working, Republicans in Congress are doubling down by allowing taxpayer dollars to prop up unaccredited, and even unsafe, schools. The last thing we need, as our students fall further behind their international peers, are voucher schools operating in relative isolation, free of oversight for curriculum, quality or management.
SOAR is the only program of its kind for a reason--there's no way our states would tolerate such nonsense. Sadly, because D.C. has not been freed from the partisan grips of Congress, it has become commonplace to see House Republicans impose their politics on D.C., despite widespread citizen and local government objection, from women's health care to marijuana reform to street design. There's justification for a program that funnels millions of dollars into a program shown to be ineffective and strongly opposed by the people that should matter--the parents, the educators, and taxpayers who support the system.
Worse, the SOAR Act strips students of constitutional protections of civil rights: federal funds can flow to schools that do not meet the federal standards to prevent discrimination against disabled persons, persons of color, persons of a religious group, women, or any other protected class. The SOAR Act is a sad step backward for education policy, civil rights, and good governance, and I strongly oppose it.
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