Two recent items from New Jersey have showcased just how the political lines separating support for either vouchers or tax credit scholarships continue to blur.

The first is commentary from Tom Byrne, who served two terms as chairman of New Jersey's Democratic Party from 1994 to 1997, supporting New Jersey's proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act. The politics are changing, Byrne says, because "many have come to see school choice as a civil rights issue," and an increasing number of Democrats don't believe it weakens traditional public schools:

Saying that it is not fair to leave some kids behind in a public school is a tacit acknowledgement of a serious problem there. If you saw ten people drowning in a lake and knew you could only rescue one or two, would you let them all drown in order to be fair to all victims?  Let's flip the logic in another direction. Democrats almost all favor affordable housing policies with lotteries that give some people a wonderful new home while leaving others behind. This is so even though the available funds might be better spent making far more existing homes more energy-efficient and lead-free.  A housing lottery that leaves people behind is okay, but an education lottery somehow is not.

The second item is notable for a fact that might escape some readers: A news story from the Bergen Record that quotes only Democratic lawmakers -- those who support, and are sponsoring, the proposed Opportunity Scholarship, and those who oppose it.

I’ve spent the previous two days discussing accomplishments in Jeb Bush’s tenure as Florida’s governor while highlighting that, despite Bush’s forceful leadership and insistence that high-poverty, minority children would succeed, the state has failed to implement all the systemic improvements the governor envisioned.

But one significant change that did occur during Bush’s first term was the creation of three publicly funded private school choice programs.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) and the McKay Scholarship for Students with Disabilities both were established in 1999, while the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students passed in 2001. The Florida Supreme Court ruled the OSP’s private school option unconstitutional in 2006, but the McKay and tax credit programs today currently help a combined 53,000 students attend more than 1,300 qualified private schools.

The McKay and tax credit programs positively impacted the achievement of low-income students during Bush’s first term by creating more competition, which research suggests benefitted the students who remained in their public schools, and by reducing the concentration of low-income and disabled students in inner-city public schools.

The competition benefit generated by the tax credit program was documented recently by David Figlio and Cassandra M.D. Hart, two Northwestern University researchers. They reviewed seven years worth of Florida test data and found the competition created by the tax credit scholarships had a positive impact on public school students’ achievement. No matter what measure the researchers used – the proximity of private schools to public schools, for instance, or the density of private schools within five miles of a public school – the effect generally was the same. (more…)

Families everywhere will benefit from Michelle Rhee’s impatience with the staid politics that interfere with new ideas in education, even if those benefits may not be entirely clear yet. Lost in the media blitz over Rhee’s latest effort to speed the transformation of public education is her support of parental choices, support that goes beyond simply calling for more charter schools.

Rhee has lent her support to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, and she made it clear yesterday that her new advocacy group, Students First, will push for similar programs. Getting states to clear the obstacles to additional charter schools and pushing for opportunity scholarships will anchor what Rhee identified as a key component of a four-part legislative agenda for the group: an expansion of school choice and competition.

Rhee understands that expanded choices in education are critical to the success of any reform, and she also knows it will take a significant grassroots effort to convince elected leaders of that. Advocates of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship went through great pains to fight for renewal of the program, only to see it flounder among the opposition of Congressional Democrats. (more…)