Backlash on Voucher Funding Portends Battle Ahead

WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman from Virginia has backed off a bid to increase funding for the school voucher program in the District of Columbia.

Aides to Rep. Tom Davis, who represents northern Virginia, had initially proposed diverting about $333,000 in a financial services appropriations bill to the D.C. school choice program, but the congressman dropped the short-lived plan amid a storm of opposition from critics of federally funded vouchers for private schools.

Within hours of seeing the text of an amendment drafted by Mr. Davis's staff, groups opposed to vouchers were mobilizing against it.

The backlash to even a relatively small bump in funding for the five-year pilot program, the first of its kind in the nation, highlights what is expected to be a fierce battle when its reauthorization is debated by the Democratic-controlled Congress later this year or in 2008.

Mr. Davis, the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, had wanted to take $1 million out of the budget for the much-maligned Office of the Special Counsel and move it to D.C. education initiatives, a senior aide on the committee said yesterday. His staff then drafted an amendment that would have sent one-third of the money to the District's public schools, one-third to charter schools, and one-third to the voucher program.

But when Mr. Davis saw the draft, he balked, and the amendment was revised to direct the entire $1 million to a less-controversial D.C. initiative known as the College Access Program, which allows high school graduates in the District to attend colleges nationwide at in-state tuition rates. "He said, ‘This isn't the time or place for a voucher fight,'" said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The revised amendment failed to pass last night. Mr. Davis was unavailable for an interview yesterday, but in a statement he criticized Democrats for putting "politics over education" by standing by the special counsel, Scott Bloch. He said Democrats have "vilified" Mr. Bloch for years but are silent now because he is targeting a top GOP supporter and ally of the president, Lorita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration.

Despite the failure of the changed amendment, opponents of school vouchers rejoiced that an increase in funding for the D.C. program never came to a vote.

"This obviously is something we're pleased to see," a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Robert Boston, said. "We don't support vouchers at all, so we don't want to see any expansion of the program."

Mr. Boston's group sent out an email to supporters almost as soon as it caught wind of the original Davis amendment on Wednesday, urging them to contact their congressional representative and press them to vote it down.