Covering these costs means giving up the monthly meal out, a summer amusement park trip, and visits to the beauty parlor. "I haven't been to the hairdresser in three years," says Rose. For Franciscoe, a polite child who answers question with a disarming "yes, sir" or "no, sir" followed by a toothy smile, it meant spending all but $31 of the $347 he earned at his summer job on the gray slacks, white shirts, and green blazer that constitute his uniform.
And then there are the living quarters. Seven hundred dollars a month buys Rose and her five housemates a two-bedroom apartment in the city's southwest quadrant. Franciscoe gets one room. Rose's aunt, who has been living with her for 13 years after spending most of her life on the streets, gets the couch. Rose, Lapria (5), Diamonesha (7), and Shantese (8) share the other bedroom. "Look around," Rose says, gesturing around her comfortably furnished but crowded apartment. "No one here has space. There's nowhere to go to be alone."
After a year of having Diamonesha in private school, Rose can see where the local government schools are lacking. "The kids who went to pre-K at St. Thomas More were already reading," she explains with some surprise, as if she'd been duped. "The public school kids were just ready to read."
Diamonesha had to catch up, but after a year she made the principal's honor roll. For Franciscoe it's been a tougher haul. His first year at St. Thomas More was challenging, and he struggled at first to earn C's and B's. There were many nights when Franciscoe and Rose stayed up past midnight doing homework. But his academics improved, and the next year he earned mostly B's and some A's. Now at Archbishop Carroll, Franciscoe is again struggling with English and religion courses, and Rose thinks she will have to get him a tutor. "He started at a good school at a later date. That's what hurting him," says Rose. "He got into the good school too late."
Franciscoe, who wants to attend Howard University and become a doctor or a lawyer, will probably succeed. But Rose's late date observation is borne out in the experience of others as well as hard data. A 1997 report from the D.C. Control Board on the city's schools concluded that "the longer a student stays in the District's public school system, the less likely they are to succeed." On the Stanford 9 Achievement Test, one in three D.C. fourth graders scored "below basic" on reading. One in two graduating seniors did. On math, three in ten fourth grade students and three in four seniors scored "below basic."
Private and charter school principals report that the longer students stay in government schools, the longer it takes them to catch up to grade level, if they ever do. Nelson Smith, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, says that many charter school principals were shocked at how far behind their kids were. One high school, which started with a single ninth-grade class, held back three-fourths of its entering class.
Voucher opponents love to point out that government schools must take everyone, while private schools are able to set standards, without any government oversight, and select their students. As D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton claimed on the floor of the House, "Choice, therefore, will not rest with the parents but with the religious and private schools that will apply their own standards to the admission and retention of each child."
A related argument charges that few private schools exist in the price range of the vouchers, and the ones that do are of poor quality. Said Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) on the House floor: "This notion that there is going to be this great choice for families is really a mistake. It really is a fraud. They are not going to have the choice to go to Sidwell Friends or St. Albans and the great private schools."
Such arguments are infuriating to parents of public school students, especially in the District of Columbia, where one in 10 students is deemed in need of special education. For roughly 1,000 of these students, the D.C. government schools do offer something--a gold-plated government-funded voucher to a private institution. The institutions to which the district sends its special-ed students are quite expensive. In 1997, the last year for which the D.C. schools provide data, it spent $21 million to send 1,079 students to private institutions--in effect, a $19,500 voucher. That same year, Democrats in Congress claimed that $7 million in scholarship funds would destroy government schools.
Some students require yet higher expenses. Benjamin Eby, whom The Washington Post describes as a "bright student who had writing and behavior problems," needed $22,000 to attend a private school in Vermont. While Rose Blassingame shares a bedroom with three grandchildren, the D.C. government was paying for plane tickets, ski lessons, and a computer for Eby.
Of course, there are private schools with lower tuition, some in Washington.Twenty-three WSF-supported kids attend Nannie Helen Burroughs School, atop a hill in the far northeast corner of town. The school looks out on a welcoming playground, with a yellow-railed jungle gym amid leafy trees, and, across the street, a burned-out third-story apartment.
Founded in 1909 as a religious girls' school by the celebrated Burroughs, an African-American author, orator, businesswoman, and educator, it is today a full-service private school, with 200 students from pre-K through seventh grade. Its graduates have earned full scholarships to such schools as the well-known St. Albans, the alma mater of school-choice opponent Al Gore.
For $4,000 a year, less than half of what the public-school system spends on a student, Nannie Helen Burroughs offers parents classes of no more than 20 kids, classrooms wired for Internet access, a computer center, a library, Bible study, and a plethora of extracurricular activities. Principal Shirley Hayes knows all of the students and their parents. She doesn't test kids for admission, but after the first month of school she meets with all her teachers to discuss how each child is doing. Those who need remediation receive it. Those who need "enhancement"--the current term for working ahead--get that as well. Each student is tested in the spring. In addition, the school's counselor, a retired D.C. government school employee, stands ready to test any child, the results ready the same day, to diagnose any problems.
Hayes, like every other person in this story, is no enemy of public education. She spent much of her life in the city's schools, which she attended as a student and worked in as a teacher for 12 years, then 23 years more as a principal. In 1990, she won a Washington Post award for excellence, which hangs on her wall. After retiring, she took a six-month temporary assignment at Burroughs. That was six years ago.
Seventeen of her 38 staff members are also former government school employees. Says Hayes, "They left because of the bureaucracy, but they still have a desire to teach." With their government pensions, they are able to accept the lower salaries at Burroughs. "Many of my teachers are retired people on annuities," says Hayes. "Private schools don't pay well, so there's a lot of turnover. Mine don't leave."
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