No Compromise in Sight For Opponents in Voucher Debate

By Mark Walsh

Washington

The conference was billed as "a new kind of dialogue" over school vouchers, designed to break the stalemate between hardened policy positions. But the panelists gathered here last week found no room for rapprochement.

"If I thought they would work, I would be for them," Sandra Feldman, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said at the conference sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

"But they haven’t worked," she argued. "When all the smoke is cleared, ... the case for vouchers just isn’t there. It’s a diversion from what needs to be done...