Money from failed schools can be used as parents decide best

A: “We have not advocated vouchers, per se,” Cheney explained that the mechanism that parents could use to spend the money would be up to state and local governments to determine. “The notion that we are somehow anti-public school is simply not the case,” he said. “We want the public schools to work. We want them to be as good as they were when we went to school.”

Cheney explained that Title I money for schools that failed would be given directly to the children’s parents. The parents could then use the money to send their children to a private school or a charter school, or to hire a tutor and send them to another public school. “We’re not proposing to take the money away until the school fails,” he said. “But if the school fails, we think it’s important that federal funds not be used to reinforce failure, that instead that there be accountability built into the system.”

Co-sponsored bill for parental choice within public schools

Cheney co-sponsored H.R.5355 (1988) to establish Federal financial assistance for parental choice open enrollment programs in public schools. Allows grants to be used for:
1. increasing school attendance and student achievement;
2. increasing accountability for success of the educational program in schools;
3. increasing parental involvement and public interest in schools;
4. establishing and operating distinctive schools with new and innovative approaches to education, including increasing flexibility and autonomy at the school level; and
5. providing a wider range of choices of educational courses of instruction to educationally and economically disadvantaged children.
6. Requires that at least 50 percent of a grant be used to carry out the parental choice program.