Lawmakers promoted school choice — the ability for parents to choose where their children should go to school — at an all-day event Monday. (Photo by Preston R. Michelson/MNS)
WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers called on Monday for legislation to ensure that quality of education is not a byproduct of where somebody lives.
“The single most important thing we did … was to let the dollars follow the child instead of making the child follow the dollars,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, in reference to the state’s education reforms.
Jindal, a prospective Republican candidate for president, was a panelist at the all-day event focused on the ability of parents to decide where their children can attend classes, which is known in policy circles as school choice.
More than 7,000 kids use the Louisiana Scholarship Program to attend the school of their choice, and the parent satisfaction rate among those in the program is above 90 percent, according to America Next, a Jindal-led policy nonprofit.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who has been a supporter of school choice, introduced legislation last month that would increase funding for states to expand choice programs for students with disabilities.
“The quality of your education should not be determined by your zip code,” Scott said at the event, which had a number of local students in attendance.
That sentiment was echoed by Jindal, who has made school choice one of the cornerstones of his potential 2016 campaign, releasing a proposal this morning calling for “an ecosystem of freedom and choice” for parents, students and teachers.
“Too often here in D.C., we have Democrats paid for by the teacher unions who are standing in the way of reform and the ones that suffer are the children,” Jindal said after his presentation. “At the local level, this isn’t a partisan issue.”
The latest federal effort for education reform is with the reauthorization of the “No Child Left Behind” act, which was authorized in 2002 and has not been updated since 2007.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who also spoke at the GOP-organized event, released a draft last month of the updated bill.
Alexander’s proposal calls for returning education decisions to the states. School choice policies do not yet factor much into the legislation.
“I’m sure that there will be amendments to ‘No Child Left Behind’ that will include Sen. Scott’s CHOICE Act and include my Scholarship for Kids act and we’ll see how the votes go,” Alexander said. He is trying to get the bill on the Senate floor by late February.
“If a parent is happy with their public school, the good news is that they can continue sending their child to that public school,” Jindal said. “This is all about giving parents that choice.”
