Senator Durbin Calls Vouchers a Flop

Senator Durbin speaks:

When the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was created in 2003, it was designed to be a five-year pilot project to give students federally paid vouchers to attend private schools. The point of a pilot program is to establish a model that can be evaluated before it's replicated on a larger scale.

Now, after three years of study, the results of that evaluation are in, and the U.S. Department of Education found: no statistically significant improvement in math scores for any voucher students (boys or girls); no statistically significant improvement in scores for male voucher students; no statistically significant improvement in scores for students transferring from failing schools (the targets of the voucher program), and only a slight improvement in reading scores for female voucher students (equivalent to three months of additional reading proficiency).

Studies have also found serious problems with the administration of the voucher program, schools with significant health/safety issues, and teachers lacking college degrees or basic teaching credentials.

Most parents wouldn't give those results a passing grade, but voucher supporters tout them as "significant academic gains."

Senator Durbin likes unions more than children.