H.R. 2746, Helping Empower Lower Income Parents Scholarships, is a voucher bill that will steal money from our public school system. At a time when our public school system is in desperate need of resources to assure all children in this country are given the educational opportunities they deserve, this bill moves us in the wrong direction. Giving a small number of students taxpayer money to attend a private school does nothing to improve our school system as a whole and takes away resources from the 90 percent of the children in our country who attend public schools. This is not the kind of change we need.

H.R. 2616, the Charter School Amendments, is the type of innovation that could improve our public school system and these changes make sense. Charter schools provide for local control and opportunities for innovation in a public school system, while assuring the schools are held accountable to specified standards. All students can take advantage of the opportunities that charter schools provide and these changes encourage the first class schools that we are looking for in our public school system.

Congress must be allowed the opportunity to debate and vote on these two fundamentally different bills separately.