Would you want only one kind of car available to drive? How about only one brand of coffee? How about only having one color of shirt to wear every day? Consumer choice is beneficial to everybody, and that includes school choice. Different schools suit different parents' needs and competition for students would drive up quality and drive down tuition. That sounds like a no-brainer to me. But powerful teachers' unions don't want any competition because it would weed out the lazy and incompetent teachers as well as streamline the administration of education, so thousands of entrenched, education bureaucrats would lose their cushy yet pointless jobs.
Vouchers work everywhere they've been tried, and even Obama values choice as he demonstrated when he sent Sasha and Malia to an exclusive DC prep school. Why shouldn't all parents of under-priviledged, inner-city kids get the same opportunities?
UPDATE: Apparently, under immense pressure from parents' groups in DC who favor vouchers, Obama has promised to suspend or at least delay the end of the DC voucher program but, read carefully the wording of hapless oaf Robert Gibbs.....
(May 11, 2009 - CBS) White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insinuated today that President Obama will reverse a provision in the omnibus spending bill to terminate school vouchers for underprivileged students in Washington, D.C.
“It wouldn't make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system,” Gibbs said in discussing the president’s thinking. “And I think we'll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn't take place.”
So they'll grandfather the funding of any students already in the program but, what his words imply but was cleverly unstated, is that no new students will be awarded voucher scholarships. So when the current students graduate, the program will in essence be over.
That The One promised to be the "education president" and now effectively ends the only successful education program in DC, relegating these poor minorities to attending the worst schools in the nation, is absolutely outrageous. I wonder when the enchanted White House press corps will stop swooning and start asking Obama some actual questions....you know, like the press corps is supposed to do?
5 comments:
Why would any democrat want to support an alternative to public school? Public schools ensure generations of liberal voters.
Right you are Tracie.
As the late Albert Shanker, former American Federation of Teachers president, once said: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
When poor, black school kids start making political donations, Democratic politicians will start fighting for them.
The parents of these kids do have a vote though. And since they received their certificate of attendance (aka diploma) from a government indoctrination center they don't know enough to demand more for their children. That and parents have been taught to believe their child's education is better left to someone else.
I never heard that quote before, but it pretty much sums up public ed. Somehow public schools aren't so much about kids and learning.
The woman in the video said she voted for Obama. Do you think she'll vote for him next election? I do.
Sadly, you are probably right. Some people would vote against their own best interests in favor of doing what's fashionable.
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