Via Shutterstock.

Via Shutterstock.

From Slate comes this reminder: At least two schools that receive taxpayer money in D.C. are teaching creationism.

The two schools — Calvary Christian Academy and the two Dupont Park Adventist School campuses — get money through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers with federal money to low-income students for private school tuition.

One of the schools, Calvary Christian Academy, uses the A Beka curriculum for science, which teaches a young Earth creationist position. Under “science,” Dupont Park Adventist says it teaches kids to “Explore and interpret evidences for the Genesis Flood and the Ice Age”; “Distinguish between the basic ideas of and evidence for naturalistic evolution and special creation”; and “Describe God’s plan for sexual relationships.”

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary, has long been a point of debate in Congress. In 2012, President Barack Obama cut funding to the program, only to agree to restore the funding at the behest of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.). The Washington Post’s review of the voucher program in November 2012 “found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.”

A November 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that the program suffers from poor oversight. From a Huffington Post article:

According to the report, D.C.’s voucher program fails to provide adequate enrollment and pricing information about participating schools to families. The D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation oversees outreach and administration for the program, but according to the report, it fails in a few significant ways.

“The Trust’s internal controls do not ensure effective implementation and oversight of OSP. Adequate policies and procedures can provide reasonable assurance of effective, efficient operations, reliable financial reporting, and compliance with applicable laws,” GAO wrote. “However, the Trust’s policies and procedures do not include a process for verifying eligibility information that schools self report. As a result, the Trust cannot ensure that schools are eligible to participate in the program and, therefore, risks providing federal dollars to students to attend schools that do not meet standards required by law.”

For the 2013-14 school year, 1,638 students are using OSP vouchers to attend participating schools. Fifty-two schools are signed up to participate in the program, and 46 currently have students that use OSP vouchers. The majority of the participating students, 84.2 percent, are black, and 64 percent receive SNAP and/or TANF benefits. Recipients receive awards of up to $12,385 for high school and up to $8,256 for elementary and middle school.

Mayor Vince Gray has long been opposed to the program and that has not changed, according to his spokesperson.