School Voucher Recipients Would Like To Know Why Barack Obama Hates Them
Mercedes Campbell is one of the 1,700 students in the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school-voucher program authorized by Congress in 2004. The program gives students up to $7,500 to attend whatever school their parents choose. For kids like Mercedes, who now attends Georgetown Visitation Prep, the DC voucher program is a way out of one of the worst school districts in the country.
“It’s different, now that I go to Visitation,” says Mercedes. “I approach things differently. It’s like a whole new world, basically.”
The program is wildly popular with parents and children—there are four applicants for every available slot—and a recent Department of Education study found that participants do significantly better than their public school peers. Indeed, after three years in private schools, students who entered the program at its inception were 19 months ahead in reading of applicants unlucky enough to still be trapped in D.C.’s public schools.
Yet working with congressional Democrats and despite his pledge to put politics and ideology aside in education, the Obama administration has effectively killed the program through a backdoor legislative move. “[Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan will use only one test in what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars,” says the president. “It’s not whether it’s liberal or conservative, but whether it works.”
What’s sad is that Obama and his fellow Democrats can spend trillions bailing out banks and auto companies, but they can’t afford the few millions this voucher program costs. A program, in fact, that costs half as much per student than the DC public school system costs.
I guess Obama values his friends in the teacher unions more than he values sound policy.
