Date: 2011-03-30
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his discussion of this legislation on the floor. I rise in opposition to this legislation because I dont believe that we can afford to spend $100 million on a program that in fact. in spite of what has been said on the other side. has been proven time and again to be ineffective and inefficient. Supporting our students. especially in poor minority communities. is the right thing to do. and particularly in this economy it is absolutely essential. But that is not what this bill does. If you really care about school reform. you want to help our students. our future. you do it in a sustainable and systematic way. You cant arbitrarily throw money at a small group of students and just hope against overwhelming evidence that your ideology somehow will work this time. You cant decide that only a handful of students deserve special attention. You cant ask Congress to vote for programs that the citizens of D.C. and the elected officials and the Mayor have not asked for. You certainly cant decide to continue a program that does not help students succeed. There are a number of concerns about this bill. First and most importantly. the program does not help the students succeed. Just 2 weeks ago. the Republicans made harmful cuts in proven programs based upon purported standards of inefficiency. seeking to get rid of inefficient programs. If this is the standard. the D.C. voucher program fails the test. The D.C. voucher program does not increase student achievement or graduate students so they are prepared to go on to college or careers. In fact. four Department of Education studies over both administrations found that the voucher program has had no effect on the academic achievement of the voucher students. These findings are consistent with other private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland. Just yesterday. the State test results showed that voucher students in Milwaukees 20year voucher program are actually performing similar or worse than other poor Milwaukee students. The study mandated by Congress about the D.C. voucher program says very clearly that the use of vouchers had no statistically significant impact on the overall student achievement in math or reading. So what is the purpose of the expenditure of this money. other than to prop up an inefficient. an ineffective. ideological point of view about how these students might learn? These students are not going to the schools that will change the outcomes. These students are not graduating with a set of skills that will allow them to succeed in college or a career. But the fact of the matter is there are many public schools in the District of Columbia that are in fact achieving those goals that are working for those parents and for those students. The District of Columbia has open choice. Parents can go wherever. But we simply decided to take these Federal dollars and put it into a program on the belief that it works in spite of all of the evidence that its not working for these students. So why are we paying a premium of another $100 million in taxpayers money to pursue this effort when on its face its not working? Yes. youve done telephone surveys of parents and they said. I think I made a good choice. Okay. You do telephone surveys of the students. Are you any safer? The answer is: No. we dont feel any safer.