LONDONDERRY, N.H. — Jeb Bush wants a federal school choice program included in any reform to the No Child Left Behind Act.
The program would allow families living below or near the poverty line to use their federal education funding at any public school they desire. Bush implied he would like to see private schools included in such a program as well. The program would not require any new funding, it would just give low-income families more flexibility with their existing federal funds. Rather than a nationwide mandate, states would have the choice to opt-in to the flexible funding.
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“I’d love to see this notion of portability of federal monies so that the federal government is a partner of reform rather than kind of a top-down provider of money with all sorts of strings attached,” Bush said Wednesday at the New Hampshire Education Summit, hosted by The 74 and the American Federation for Children.
Portability of federal education funding has been proposed in Congress for Title I funding, which provides school districts extra money for students eligible for the free or reduced lunch program. Families earning 185 percent of the poverty line are eligible for the reduced lunch program.
“[The funding] comes without any accountability attached to it,” Bush said. “If states want to try something different, that Title I money that goes to schools where low-income kids reside, they don’t have that ability.”
A federal school choice program for low-income students will be a topic of discussion this fall as members of Congress meet in a conference committee to debate No Child Left Behind reform. The House version of reform would let low-income students pick any public school they desire, while the Senate version did not include any such program. Amendments to create federal school choice programs failed on the Senate floor.
No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2002 by Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush.
Bush often comes under fire for his support for Common Core at the state level. Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy. During his presidential campaign, he has maintained that the federal government should have no role in Common Core. “If people don’t like Common Core, fine,” Bush said. “Just make sure your standards are much higher than the ones you had before. We can’t keep dumbing down standards. … This should not be federally-driven, the federal government should have nothing to say with this.”
Update: This article was updated on Aug. 20 with additional information about the school choice program.
