The Washington Post has another excellent editorial today praising Obama’s willingness to grandfather existing students in the DC voucher program but lamenting his unwillingness to extend the same opportunity to future students.
As they put it:
“It is to President Obama’s credit that he wants to uphold the right of fledgling poet Carlos Battle and 1,715 other voucher recipients not to have their educations disrupted. We can’t help but wish, though, that other needy students would get the same opportunity of choice.”
And in a bit of understatement they added:
“Maybe there was also some thought given to the political optics of booting hundreds of poor, black students from private schools back into troubled public schools.”
Umm…. maybe just a bit.
And they close:
“In an ideal world, we would hope for more than that compromise. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had already scheduled a hearing next week to evaluate the program. Parents, students and a scientist who have studied the program are among those scheduled to testify… The hearings need to be conducted with an open mind. If indeed this program is shown to work to the benefit of children, it should be continued. And, not — we submit — just for the ones who are lucky enough to be in it now.”
(corrected typo from WaPo)
Jay P. Greene's Blog 