Excellence through Choice to Elevate Learning Act
Latest action · Jul 31, 2003 Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (text of measure as introduced: CR 8/1/2003 S10684-10685)
Progress
Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.
- IntroducedJul 31, 2003
- Passed SenateNot reached
- Passed HouseNot reached
- To the PresidentNot reached
- Became lawNot reached
Summary
Excellence through Choice to Elevate Learning Act - Directs the Secretary of Education to make grants to States for private or public school choice vouchers for children from low-income families who are enrolled in low-performing elementary or secondary public schools.
Requires each grantee State to provide scholarships (at $2,000 per year, but with continuing awards) to the parents of eligible children through a lottery system administered for all eligible schools by the State educational agency. Requires that a child eligible for such a scholarship be: (1) enrolled in an eligible public elementary or secondary school; and (2) a member a family with income not more than 200 percent of the poverty line.
Allows the use of such funds for: (1) payment of tuition and fees at the school selected by the scholarship child's parents, plus reasonable transportation costs; (2) up to $500 of supplementary academic services, if the parents choose a provider (with an appropriate refund policy) which the State determines capable of rendering such services; and (3) educational programs that help the child achieve high levels of academic excellence, if the child chooses to attend a public school.
Requires: (1) a grantee State to allow lawfully operating public and private elementary and secondary schools serving the area involved, including religious schools, to participate in the program; (2) participating schools or providers of supplementary academic services to comply with specified antidiscrimination requirements; and (3) national evaluation of the program by the Comptroller General.
Directs specified congressional committees to identify, and report to certain congressional leaders on, wasteful Federal spending (including loopholes to revenue raising tax provisions) as a means of providing funding for this Act.
Cosponsors
Members who signed on, in the order they did.
Actions 3
Everything that happened, newest first.
- Jul 31, 2003Introduced in Senate
- Jul 31, 2003Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. (text of measure as introduced: CR 8/1/2003 S10684-10685)
- Jul 31, 2003Sponsor introductory remarks on measure. (CR S10683-10684)
Subjects
Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Education.
- Academic performance
- Charter schools
- Commerce
- Congress
- Congressional investigations
- Corporation taxes
- Economics and Public Finance
- Education
- Education of the disadvantaged
- Educational accountability
- Educational vouchers
- Elementary and secondary education
- Elementary education
- Families
- Federal aid to education
- Income tax
- Parent-school relationships
- Private schools
- Religion
- Religious education
- Scholarships
- School choice
- Secondary education
- Social Welfare
- Student transportation
- Tax exclusion
- Tax rates
- Taxation
- Transportation and Public Works
- Travel costs
- Waste in government spending
Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.