The Washington Post has an excellent forum today on DC vouchers despite Obama and Duncan’s sincere wish that this issue would go away already. A series of folks were asked to provide their thoughts on the controversy, which contains a lot of material for thought and comment.
But for now I’d like to concentrate on what Sen. Dick Durbin, who led the union’s charge to kill D.C. vouchers, had to say:
“Most problematic, the Education Department’s recent report could not show that voucher students are performing better than their public school counterparts.”
After reading this I had to ask myself — is he stupid or lying? Of course, when it comes to an Illinois pol, like Durbin, one doesn’t have to choose. He could be both.
The Education Department’s report not only could show that voucher students are performing better than their public school counterparts; it didshow exactly that. Unless we are parsing what the meaning of the word is… is, Durbin’s statement suggests that he either didn’t understand the report or that he is willfully distorting its findings.
“Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems more interested in the sentencing gap than the learning gap. The president pays lip-service to the need to open pathways to educational achievement, but he and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been actively working to shut down Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides low-income children with $7,500 per year to use toward tuition at a private school. Mr. Obama can’t claim that the program isn’t working. The latest evaluation by his own Education Department showed scholarship recipients — 99% of whom are black or Hispanic — outperforming their public-school peers in reading. That finding takes on even more significance when you consider that black 12th-graders in this country average lower reading scores than white 8th-graders.
Yesterday, the administration announced that it will support allowing current students to remain in the program but will oppose letting any new kids join them. The illogic is exquisite. If the president believes that school vouchers are effective enough to grandfather existing participants, the scholarship program deserves to be expanded, not shuttered.”
“So all hell was raised over canceling the DC voucher program ’cause it worked. So Obama’s done a flip-flop and he’s gonna let every kid in it, going to keep the program open ’til every kid graduates. Then he’s going to shut it down, to which I have a question. Either vouchers work or they don’t. Either they work or they don’t. Obama doesn’t believe in them. He wants to shut the voucher program down. He’s said so. He doesn’t believe in the voucher program. So why would he continue this program if it’s a bad thing? He believes it’s a bad thing. He says he believes it’s a bad thing. If it’s a bad thing, if it doesn’t serve a purpose, in his view, he ought to cancel it, he should stick with the cancellation because he doesn’t think this is a good program. Period. He’s not concerned with the disruption to the kids here. I’ll tell you what this is about. (interruption) What do you think it’s about? Partially, public relations propaganda. But let’s be specific because everything with Obama is a PR, propaganda.”
The incoherence of letting students continue in a program that you claim is harmful was exactly the point of my post yesterday. That Rush. Always fawning over everything I write and saying “ditto, ditto, ditto.”
But wait, there’s more. Rush then started to channel Kanye West:
“What Barack Obama is worried about is that the black population will discover he really doesn’t care about them. And that was starting to happen…. What Obama has to do here is to make sure that the black population does not figure out that he really doesn’t care about them, that they’re just pawns.”
And Rush topped it off with:
“You have to ask yourself this question. How in the world have we gotten to the point where a program that does not only a great job of educating children, but a better job of educating children, how have we gotten to the point where a program that does a better job of educating black children with less money than public schools is considered controversial? How in the hell have we gotten there? And how in the hell have we gotten to the point where a school that educates poor black kids better and cheaper, that that poses a threat to somebody and the school has to be shut down? How in the world have we gotten to this point? These kids going to these voucher schools have a great chance, at least a greater chance to succeed.”
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.”
“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.”
On the one hand, this is a victory for the voucher advocates and shows that their efforts have been effective. On the other hand, this is a clever political move for Obama that allows him to kill the DC voucher program without paying the political price of denying low-income kids access to a program that the official evaluation has deemed beneficial. Just because he’s not ripping this opportunity out of the hands of the existing 1,700 students doesn’t mean that he’s not ripping it out of the hands of every future student who could benefit from it.
Grandfathering in the existing students may be humane and politically savvy, but it is also logically incoherent. If the program helps kids then why not let future students into the program so that they could also be helped? If the program doesn’t help kids, why let these 1,700 continue in it? For an administration that prides itself on its commitment to science and doing whatever works regardless of ideology or predisposition, they sure seem like Clintonian political triangulators completely impervious to evidence or common sense.
Besides, even to get the grandfathering we have to move the congressional democrats, led by rocket scientist Dick Durbin (who attended and whose children attended private schools).
“Tomorrow afternoon at 1 o’clock in Washington, we’ll learn if anything has changed. Two groups — D.C. Children First and D.C. Parents for School Choice — are holding a rally at Freedom Plaza, just across from the offices of the city government. As their flier explains, “D.C. families deserve the same kind of choices that the Mayor, City Council Members, and Federal leaders with children have.”
It ought to make for an interesting event. In addition to Mr. Chavous and former mayor (current D.C. council member) Marion Barry, speakers will include former mayor Anthony Williams — whose leadership played a pivotal role in establishing the Opportunity Scholarships five years ago. Mr. Chavous also says there will be figures from black entertainment, as well as moms and dads and schoolchildren.”
The Wall Street Journal has another strong editorial today condemning Barack Obama and Arne Duncan’s hypocrisy in seeking to end the D.C. voucher program. Here’s a highlight:
“See if you can follow this political syllogism. President Obama and his Education Secretary have repeatedly promised to support “what works,” regardless of ideology. The teachers unions adamantly oppose school vouchers, whether or not they work. Ergo, Messrs. Obama and Duncan decide to end a D.C. school voucher program that works and force poor kids back into schools where Messrs. Obama and Duncan would never send their own children. What a disgrace.”
There’s a rally of voucher families planned for this week and there will be congressional hearings on reauthorizing the program next week. Stay tuned.
Posted by Jay P. Greene 
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