Susan Davis: “I rise in opposition to the voucher proposal that has just been addressed, and also to the pilot proposals that are with…”

“I rise in opposition to the voucher proposal that has just been addressed, and also to the pilot proposals that are with us right now. We have to ask ourselves why would we have a pilot program? And when we have pilot programs, we do want to demonstrate that there is merit to them. And we often want to demonstrate that there is merit in going beyond a particular community or a particular charismatic leader who puts together a program. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest to my colleagues that if we are really trying to bring the pilot to scale that is being proposed here today, we have to look at the communities and the communities in which they will realistically be brought to scale. If I can offer San Diego for a moment, we surveyed the number of private school slots available in San Diego, and we surprisingly found a realistically good number: 1,666 slots. Out of that, 1,300 were religious schools. The rest were identified as nonreligious, but we are looking at a unified school district of 132,000 students. Yes, it sounds innocent to have a pilot program; but would we ever be able to bring that up to scale? You can probably demonstrate that it has merit. I do not question that. You can do that in select areas. Mr. Chairman, we are trying to go beyond that. We are trying to truly leave no child behind.”