President Bush has proposed a federal budget for FY 2007 that includes $100 million to expand educational opportunities for students attending under-performing public schools that have failed to make adequate improvement in six year.

Called the America’s Opportunity Scholarships for Kids program, the new initiative would provide competitive grants to states, school districts, and non-profit organizations, including faith-based organizations, that in turn would award scholarships allowing children either to attend private schools or to receive intensive after-school or summer tutoring.

The private school scholarships would be worth up to $4,000 and could be used by low-income families to cover tuition, fees, and transportation costs. The tutoring scholarships, worth up to $3,000, would expand the current Supplemental Educational Services (SES) program, enabling students to receive additional hours of instruction.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, poor-performing public schools that have failed to make adequate yearly progress for six years are identified as in need of restructuring. Only students in those schools would benefit from the new proposal.

Currently, school districts are supposed to provide such students with the opportunity to attend better-performing public schools. But according to a briefing paper prepared by the U.S. Department of Education, many districts "face obstacles in providing students with the opportunity to attend more effective schools," and most schools that accept transfers under the program "do not generally have substantially higher achievement levels than the schools under restructuring." The president’s new proposal is designed to help students in chronically under-performing schools by offering them an expanded range of attractive opportunities. The department’s paper makes the case this way: "Students should not be left behind as schools are in the process of restructuring."

The new proposal is part of a $2.77 trillion budget plan that President Bush submitted to Congress February 6. The proposed budget includes $54.4 billion in discretionary education spending.

The majority of parents using vouchers and funds like this, send their children to private religious schools as opposed to simply private schools. This helps account for the US Department of Education’s estimate that 33% of all students attending K-12 religious schools come from non-religious families.