California Democrats, as a rule, have never been known for their support of school vouchers. Thus U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein made a splash Tuesday when, in an Op-Ed piece printed in the Washington Post, she announced her support for a longtime effort to start a voucher program for the poorest students in the Washington, D.C., public schools.
What interest does the senator from California, who has never before supported vouchers in any form, have in a proposed experiment in the nation's capital? A significant one, actually: Because of the arcane and intertwined relationship between D.C. and the federal government, the city needs congressional approval to launch the program. Feinstein sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is now considering the proposal.
The $15 million program would provide $7,500 annual scholarships for 2,000 children from low-income families ($34,000 or less for a family of four) to attend private schools of their choosing. The city's Democratic mayor, Anthony Williams, the school board president and thousands of D.C. parents have been pushing hard for its passage.
Bucking her Democratic colleagues in the Senate, who have promised to filibuster, Feinstein said her support for the program stemmed from her strong belief that mayors -- she was once mayor of San Francisco -- deserve the chance to innovate at the local level. And she has lost confidence that the D.C. school system, which now spends more annually per pupil ($10,852) than virtually any other district in the nation but still achieves some of the worst results, has the wherewithal to fix the problem.

"Ultimately this issue is not about ideology or political correctness," she wrote. "It is about providing a new opportunity for good education."

Like clockwork, Barbara Kerr, president of the powerful California Teachers Association, lashed out at Feinstein's perceived heresy. Mary Bergan, president of the California Federation of Teachers, said, "We're just appalled." The following day, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell fired off a letter to Feinstein -- and, of course, the news media -- urging the senator "to keep our public schools great for every child and oppose the District of Columbia voucher program," as though one were actually dependent on the other. Could he possibly be any more transparent about carrying water for the unions?

As O'Connell and the unions were eager to point out, California rejected a statewide voucher proposal in 2000. This editorial page also opposed it. But that initiative -- which would have provided vouchers for all and wreaked havoc on even the parts of the public school system that were functioning well -- differed starkly from the proposal in D.C., which is narrowly tailored to needy families whose educational options have gone from bad to worse. The D.C. experiment, which includes a strict evaluation component, offers a promising chance to study whether parental choice and competition can drive meaningful change in what may be the nation's most troubled urban school system.

Feinstein deserves points for stepping out of the partisan box to vote her convictions, and for voicing concern for the welfare of children who can't afford to wait any longer for decent schools.