If 40 percent of Congressmen have enrolled their children in private schools at one time in their lives, why is Congress and the Obama administration working so hard to kill the D.C. school choice program and consign poor families to inferior schools? Dan Lips and Lindsay Burke of the Heritage Foundation expose the hypocrisy in School Choice for Me, Not You.
To show you how much the debate on school choice is shifting even the liberal Washington Post is lininig up. Commenting on the Heritage School Choice study, the Post opined:
No doubt there are those who would argue that personal choices should not dictate decisions of policymakers. Fair enough, but where is the objective examination of this program, a rational discussion of the pros and con? Where is the humanity of not wanting to hurt children, who won't be able to continue in their current schools if the scholarship program is eliminated? No one has been able to offer any evidence of the drawbacks of this small local program, while evidence of its benefits has been mounting. It has been disappointing that many of those one would expect to speak up for the educational rights of poor, minority children — and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) tops the list – have been almost mute or, or as has been the case with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) downright hostile. Meanwhile, former mayor Anthony A. Williams and former D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous continue to champion school choice as the civil rights issue it is.
Unfortunately, thousands of school kids in North Carolina are relegated to the same fate. Law makers have refused to give poor families the same options many of them enjoy: access to good schools. Heck, many legislators can't even bring themselves to expand the number of charter schools, as recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools. There are currently about 5,200 students on charter school waiting lists in North Carolina. Maybe the teacher's unions could lend a hand in explaining this to students and their families.
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