Take a good look at the faces of black parents, their children and their supporters protesting for school choice. Notice, they aren't protesting for a government handout, "culturally competent" teachers, or any other Marxist social engineering. They simply wish to choose safe, competent schools for their children.
DC School Choice has proven to be so popular that Attorney General Eric Holder told former DC city councilman, Kevin Chavous, to pull a television ad in support of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. To the chagrin of Democratic lawmakers, black DC residents are waking up to the fact that teacher's unions and the Democrat Party obstruct their access to a quality education of their choice.
Thanks to the activism of DC parents and supporters, funding was reluctantly reinstated for all but 216 of the students with the stipulation that no new enrollees would be allowed into the program. So in spite of the evidence showing the efficacy of the program and the overwhelming demand, President Obama and Democrat lawmakers once again fall in line with their money masters at the teacher's unions.
Larry Sand reports in We're All Right-Wing Bastards Now:
Here’s what NEA president Dennis Van Roekel wrote to Democratic congressmen in March:
The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher . . . program. We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress.Vouchers are not real education reform. . . .
Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.
Three months later, Congress dutifully voted to kill the program.
Democrats have labored for decades to maintain their incestuous relationship with the teacher's unions for one reason: power. Let the school children be damned. President Obama, Senator Richard Durbin (Illinois has nearly 13,000 students on the charter school wait list), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and many other Democratic lawmakers continue to echo the lie that vouchers don't work. The Washington Times Reports in School Vouchers at Risk:
"The president doesn't believe that vouchers are a long-term answer to our educational problems and the challenges that face our public school system, where the vast majority of students are educated in this country," White Housespokesman Robert Gibbs said in March.
Yet vouchers are routinely used in government as well as the private sector:
Governments dole out vouchers for vaccinations, housing and other services. In the debate about climate change, there is talk about the federal government handing out vouchers to companies to put a cap on pollution. Even casinos give away vouchers for meals and gambling, and there remains considerable talk in Washington about what role vouchers could play in health care reform. Finally, if you're in the military, you can receive free tickets to the BB&T Classic at the Verizon Center on Sunday by obtaining a voucher.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said:
"We need to be more ambitious. We need to fix all of our schools."The education bureaucracy has had in excess of 40 years to "fix" public schools, but has failed miserably. How many more poor black children must be sacrificed on the teacher's unions and Democratic lawmaker's self-serving alter before parents are restored with their God-given right to make educational choices for their own children?
Vouchers are one aspect of fixing the public schools, by providing much needed competition as public schools must compete for students and the related dollars. Without competition, public schools have no incentive to make education reform a reality.