Letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees: August 12, 2009

The Honorable Carl Levin
Chairman
Senate Committee on Armed Services
228 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-6050

The Honorable Ike Skelton
Chairman
House Committee on Armed Services
2120 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Re:     Conferees should strike private school voucher study (Section 535) of the National Defense Authorizations Act for Fiscal Year 2010

Dear Chairman Levin and Chairman Skelton:

The National School Boards Association (NSBA), representing 95,000 local school board members across the nation through our state school boards associations, urges the members of the Conference Committee on the National Defense Authorizations Act for FY 2010 (H.R. 2647) to strike Section 535 of the bill that would authorize a study of private school vouchers for military families.

NSBA opposes the voucher study because the educational efficacy of vouchers is not supported by responsible research; and the proposed study is based on design elements that could lead to wrong policy decisions and adversely affect the students who would be involved. Research has repeatedly proven that vouchers – regardless of where they are – do not improve student achievement. At a time when Congress and the President have urged the elimination of wasteful programs, mandating a government study that could be skewed for the creation of school vouchers is unjustifiable.

Studies of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland and the District of Columbia have shown that vouchers provide no significant improvement of student academic achievement. 1 For example, all three of the congressionally mandated Department of Education studies of the D.C. voucher program have concluded that it has had no effect on the academic achievement of the target students – students from “schools in need of improvement” under the No Child Left Behind Act, and no effect on students overall in math. 2 These studies further found that the voucher program had no significant effect on student satisfaction, motivation, or engagement or on student views on school safety. 3 In fact, they revealed that many of the students in the voucher program were less likely to have access to key services such as – special needs and English-as-a-second-language programs as well as counselors and nurses – than students who were in public schools. 4

As for the study itself, serious flaws in its design could result in biased conclusions. For example, the study does not address such important issues as the fiscal and educational impacts on local school districts and communities if students leave the public schools to attend private schools through vouchers. In addition to local and state funding, this could seriously affect school districts serving the remaining military dependent students, as any loss of students would result in a loss of Impact Aid funding, a program that currently funds on average of only 60 percent of a district’s need.

Correspondingly, there’s no mentioning of how vouchers for military children would be paid for. Would vouchers be funded by the Department of Defense or would local communities bear the burden of funding private school tuitions? The study also does not address how charter schools, another option called for by the study, would be authorized, financed and held accountable for student achievement; nor is there clear research that charter schools, like vouchers, represent a superior educational strategy.


Finally, the study neglected to examine the cause for schools to be “in need of improvement,” a label that can be triggered even by a small percentage of students who are non-proficient under NCLB. Congress and the Administration have recognized the flaws in the current NCLB accountability measures and are preparing to fix them during reauthorization. Therefore, the label of “in need of improvement” should not be the basis for military children to have a publically funded voucher to enroll in private school or to create a charter school. Because the proposed study is not authorized to consider these and other policy questions, it will yield unrefined and skewed results.

NSBA believes that the study under Section 535 is flawed and should be eliminated during conference on the National Defense Authorizations Act for FY 2010. Objective evidence continues to show that vouchers are ineffective in raising student achievement and ensuring every student, including students from military families, the highest quality education. Thus, Congress should not waste government funds studying the use of vouchers. Accordingly, it is recommended that Congress should fund or study real education reforms that benefit all students.

Thank you for considering our views and please contact Katherine Shek, legislative analyst, at (703) 535-1627 or by email at kshek@nsba.org if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Michael A. Resnick
Associate Executive Director

Cc:     Members, Senate Committee on Armed Services 
          Members, House Committee on Armed Services