Supporters of School Choice Should Wear Green on Friday

Given the sorry state of the school system in the nation's capital, you can expect to see television news reports of this hearing showing plenty of people who look as if they are dressed for St. Patrick's Day.

It's no surprise that many parents in D.C. are seeking alternatives to educate their children. Last year, nearly 60 percent of respondents to a Washington Post poll assigned ratings of "not so good" or "poor" to the District's public schools.

Story after story appears in the Washington Post and the Washington Times about the money wasted by the city's educational bureaucracy. Standardized test results show many of the city's students are below average in math and reading proficiency. Nor are many of the city's schools considered to be safe environments for learning. Corruption within the city's teachers union has been front-page news recently.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the need for school choice in the District of Columbia is simply to ask the parents who have or had children in the city's schools.

One such parent is Virginia Walden-Ford, who heads an organization called D.C. Parents for School Choice.

Her son, William, is now a lance corporal in the Marine Corps. But where would he be now if not for a neighbor who was kind enough to offer him a private scholarship?

William was a quiet young man. The high school he attended, Roosevelt, certainly not considered to be one of the worst of the city's schools, was not a good place for him.

In order to survive, he aligned himself with the tougher kids and started getting into trouble. He started skipping school, getting into scrapes. At Roosevelt, he was viewed to be a number; the administration and the faculty failed to show any real interest in him.

Mrs. Walden-Ford recalls the day he was handcuffed to the porch by the police. Fortunately, within two weeks of that incident, he was able to enter Archbishop Carroll High School thanks to the generosity of his neighbor.

The difference was dramatic. William started doing better in school; even the way he stood was different.

William and his mother have talked about those high school days, and she says her son maintains the only thing that saved him was getting into Archbishop Carroll.

Now Mrs. Walden-Ford works closely with parents throughout the city trying to find for their children a way out of the city's terrible public school system.

A number of superintendents have shuffled in and out of the city's school system over the last decade, each entering with hopeful talk of bringing about reform, only to depart with nothing having changed.

The current superintendent, Paul Vance, held a similar position in neighboring Montgomery County, Md., considered to be one of the premiere school systems in the country. But he has been in his current post for nearly three years and is still struggling just to get a grip on the city's byzantine educational bureaucracy, whose power over the school system was described earlier this year by the Washington Post as "amazing-bordering-on-criminal."

Change cannot come fast enough in the District whatever Vance tries to do given the power of the teachers union, the bureaucracy and the old-guard political leaders in the city. The kids and their best interest get lost in the shuffle.

The District's non-voting representative in Congress is Eleanor Holmes Norton, a very bright and able woman who is absolutely dead wrong on this issue. She has made clear her determination to ensure that students forced to enter D.C.'s public schools will have the doors locked behind them, that they will be unable to take advantage of better alternatives through scholarships funded by public money.

Yet it is Rep. Holmes Norton who asserted in 1997 that she could "say with confidence that the people I represent would deeply resent the imposition of vouchers."

It's worth asking: Just who does Rep. Holmes Norton represent? The city's corrupt teachers union? The entrenched bureaucrats at the city's huge education department headquarters? The city's old-guard political establishment?

The National Education Association, which must feel threatened by this bill because it knows the damage that will be done to its union nationally if Flake-Lipinski were to pass and children were to leave the failed public schools only to excel in their new private and religious schools?

Certainly it's not the parents.

Because more and more parents in Washington are trying to find a way to have their children leave the failed school system.

Even Mayor Anthony Williams came out in support of vouchers last week, and so has the president of the local Board of Education, signs that the hold of the old-guard political establishment is weakening.

What the Flake-Lipinski bill will do is to set up a corporation to establish and administer a scholarship program. Scholarships worth $5,000 will be provided for children of families who fall below the national poverty line, and ones of $3,750 will be given to families whose household income does not exceed 185 percent of the poverty line.

The scholarships can be used to help parents send their children to private, public or religious schools in Virginia, Maryland or the District of Columbia. There are expensive schools in the area that are attended by the children of Washington's elite, but experience shows that the students helped by the scholarships would be most likely to attend Catholic and evangelical schools, which have much more modest price tags but provide their students with a first-class education.

Flake-Lipinski also directs that the scholarship program is to be evaluated and a report is to be issued.

Today is a big day for conservatives as we recognize it is two years since President Bush nominated Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen to federal judgeships. They have been obstructed by the relentlessly partisan, liberal bloc in the Senate that has upended 200 years of precedent in the handling of federal judicial nominations.

Many members of that same liberal bloc in the Congress are also determined to continue obstructing students from finding better alternatives to the abysmal education they are receiving in Washington, D.C.'s public schools.

If Representatives Flake and Lipinski succeed in their effort to establish a school choice program in Washington, reporters for the national news media will be watching it closely.

So, the success of D.C.'s program coupled with those of Cleveland and Milwaukee could help to spur other cities and states to start similar school choice programs, and the conservative movement will be able to pat itself on the back for all it has done to provide opportunity for deserving students.

But remember: The people who have the most at stake in the success of today's hearing on Flake-Lipinski are the parents and students of Washington, because right now too many have nowhere else to go other than the failed public schools.

But why will supporters of Flake-Lipinski be wearing green today?

Because the Government Reform Committee has ruled that buttons or stickers of any kind may not be worn by those attending the hearing, the groups that are calling for passage of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Act of 2003 have asked their followers to wear green to signify their support for school choice.

So, this year, it's not just St. Patrick's Day that you wear green for good luck.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.