Obama trying to kill the D.C. school choice program

from Politico
April 12, 2009
Pejman Yousefzadeh, Attorney and blogger:

One of the more underplayed stories in the past couple of weeks is the effort made on the part of the Obama Administration and its Democratic allies in Congress to kill the D.C. school choice program. This is an unfair and heartless act on the part of an Administration claiming to want to improve the state of American education, an act that puts the teachers' unions ahead of students and their families.

The sorry state of the D.C. public school system is well known. The system is bad enough that President Obama opted for a private school education for his daughters. So, for that matter, did Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who was well known in Chicago for his efforts to expand school choice via charter schools, but who obviously had to check his school choice credentials at the door if he wanted to work for the Obama Administration.

Paying no heed whatsoever to the needs and interests of D.C. families--who are practically begging to be allowed to participate in the school choice program--the Obama Administration and its Congressional Democratic allies are working to condemn those families who cannot afford a private education for their children to a public school system that is unsafe, in desperate need of repair, and unable to provide for the education needs of its kids. We know that the response from the Administration, Congress and the teachers' unions who call the shots on this issue will be "increase funding!". Trouble is that the United States already spends more per capita on education spending than any other country on earth. Look what it's gotten us thus far.

Adding insult to injury, Secretary Duncan is fudging the facts when it comes to school choice by working to bury a study that promotes school choice programs--simply because the results and conclusions of that study are inconvenient from the perspective of the Obama Administration, Congressional Democrats, and the teachers' unions. He's also instituted a gag order, preventing people from talking about the study. This despite the massive cost savings and better results the D.C. school choice program has brought about and despite the fact that if school choice were more widely implemented, the increased competition would bring about a decrease in silly policies pursued by school in their collective in loco parentis role. It's hard to see how anyone actively engaging to undermine the state of education in the United States could have done more than Secretary Duncan has to formulate and implement destructive policies to that end.

But of course, perhaps it is unfair to beat up on Secretary Duncan. After all, the Cossacks work for the Czar.
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