Corbett makes case for school vouchers in Washington speech

WASHINGTON - Gov. Corbett, making his first appearance on a national stage since taking office in January, told an audience at an education conference Monday that providing families with an alternative to failing public schools was a "moral obligation."

The featured lunch speaker at a policy summit sponsored by the advocacy group American Federation for Children, Corbett said school districts had become "labor-management battlegrounds" and portrayed school choice as a powerful tool for repairing a broken system.

"School districts spend too much time on contracts, not enough time on curriculum," Corbett said to applause from about 200 attendees. "The answer is not to blow up the system; the answer is to change it, and the only way I see to do that is to make funding portable."

Corbett was talking about tuition vouchers - shifting taxpayer money from public to private and religious schools on a per-pupil basis, an issue that is at the top of his first-term agenda and is under fierce debate in the state Capitol. The governor has backed a proposal to offer tuition vouchers averaging about $7,000 to $9,000 to help lower-income families move children from failing public schools to private or parochial ones.

In Washington, Corbett and his policy initiative were embraced by national advocates of school choice and vouchers.

"The eyes of the school-choice movement are on Pennsylvania," said Betsy DeVos, who introduced Corbett and is chairman of the federation, which is promoting school choice in statehouses around the nation. The conference's stated purpose was "to discuss developments in the school-choice movement, analyze trends, and discuss ways to amplify our work." DeVos' family fortune has helped bankroll pro-voucher campaigns and candidates.

But as Corbett touted the virtues of vouchers in Washington, a state Senate vote on the bill to create vouchers in Pennsylvania was being put off for a third week.

And outside the hotel where Corbett was speaking, more than 100 protesters, many of them teachers, were accusing him of betraying public education.

The protesters, about half of them from Philadelphia, gathered outside the Marriott Hotel waving signs that read "Vouchers Aren't the Answer" and chanting "save our schools." A smaller group of counter-protesters from the conservative group Freedomworks, which promotes limited government, held signs in support of Senate Bill 1, the Pennsylvania voucher legislation.

"Vouchers are a Trojan horse," said Marc Stier, executive director of Penn Action, a liberal group based in Philadelphia. "They want to end public education." Stier said it was telling that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose push to curb public employees' collective-bargaining rights has sparked wide attention, was the voucher conference's scheduled dinner speaker.

One of the people in Corbett's audience was Otto Banks, executive director of Reach Foundation, a Harrisburg group that supports school choice. Banks said public education was "absolutely not" being targeted by voucher supporters. "We're aware that there are phenomenal public schools," he said before the speech. "We just don't think students should be trapped by failing schools."

In Harrisburg, the Senate's weekly calendar once again did not include the voucher bill, suggesting it might be shy of votes needed for passage. But Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), said the Senate has worked out an agreement with Corbett and the votes are there. Meanwhile, he said, Senate leaders are talking with House counterparts to ensure there is agreement on the language.

"This is not an issue without controversy," Arneson said. "But I don't think there is any reason to think it wouldn't pass the Senate." A spokesman for the House GOP was noncommittal, saying members would wait to see what the Senate did.

Corbett, in his speech, acknowledged the difficulty he was having getting the voucher bill through the General Assembly.

"It's not an easy battle; there is opposition," he said. "I can't understand it, but there it is."