{"id":693966,"date":"2010-03-17T17:27:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T21:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/senate-votes-against-school-choice-41002\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T11:31:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:31:48","slug":"senate-votes-against-school-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/693966","title":{"rendered":"Senate Votes Against School Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On 03.17.10 11:29 AM posted by Lindsey Burke<\/p>\n<p>\n&lt;\/p&gt;Last night, the Senate considered an amendment by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The amendment failed 42 \u0096 55. The bi-partisan amendment, which was cosponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and George Voinovich (R-OH), would have allowed new students to enroll in the scholarship program and would have ensured current students are able to remain in the existing private schools. &lt;ahref=&quot;http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/03\/16\/AR2010031604034.html&quot;&gt;The Washington Post writes today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced an amendment to a reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that would have extended the voucher program for five years and funded it at $20 million a year, opening it to new students. The Senate killed Lieberman&#8217;s attempt to amend a different bill earlier this month.&lt;spanid=&quot;more-29082&quot;&gt;&lt;\/span&gt;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Many teachers in our nation&#8217;s capital . . . are just not providing an adequate education to their students,\u0092 Lieberman said. \u0091We&#8217;re giving these children the ability to save their own lives.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>More than 1,700 students participated in the 2008-09 school year. That number dropped to 1,319 this year because applications were closed to new students in the spring, and some students have graduated or left the program\u0085<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Already, D.C. parents have a choice,\u0092 said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who spoke on the Senate floor against the program. \u0091We have over 60 charters in the District of Columbia, and they&#8217;re growing all the time.&#8217;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While charters are in fact serving many children, the scholarships are specifically meeting the needs of those students enrolled in the program \u0096 and &lt;ahref=&quot;http:\/\/ies.ed.gov\/ncee\/pubs\/20094050\/pdf\/20094050.pdf&quot;&gt;have been successful in raising academic achievement.<\/p>\n<p>In the video above, watch Sen. Lieberman explain how a federally-mandated evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program found children to be improving academically.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/17\/senate-votes-against-school-choice\/\" >http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/17\/&#8230;school-choice\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 03.17.10 11:29 AM posted by Lindsey Burke &lt;\/p&gt;Last night, the Senate considered an amendment by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The amendment failed 42 \u0096 55. The bi-partisan amendment, which was cosponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), and George Voinovich (R-OH), would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2748,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-693966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2Ux0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2748"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795411,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693966\/revisions\/795411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}