Barack Obama attended a private school as a youth. He even sends his daughters to one. But as president he wants to deny that same opportunity to low-income students in the District of Columbia.
After two years of limiting educational choices for the poorest kids in D.C., Obama is about to meet his match.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), a strong supporter of school choice, is hitting back hard with new legislation this week to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, a school voucher program that the Obama administration has left on its last leg.
Boehner will also send a not-so-subtle message to Obama during his State of the Union address. He has invited parents, students and teachers who have benefited from school choice to sit in his box in the House chamber. They include three children who are D.C. Opportunity Scholarship recipients, D.C. Parents for School Choice founder Virginia Walden Ford and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who oversees many of the private schools students attend.
Obama is expected to make a plea for education reform in his annual address to Congress. Republicans have long thought the president was vulnerable on the issue of school choice given his own personal background.
Now he’s facing a serious bipartisan push to restore the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Boehner will co-sponsor the legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), a supporter of the program and one of the few Senate Democrats to stand up for the low-income students.
“If the president is sincere about working together on education reform, we should start by saving this successful, bipartisan program that has helped so many underprivileged children get a quality education,” Boehner said.
The program was created in 2004, offering scholarship recipients $7,500 to use at private schools. D.C. public schools, in contrast, spend $15,000 per pupil each year for some of the worst schools in America.
[UPDATE: The Cato Institute reports that the $15,000 figure only includes operating costs; official D.C. budget data shows it actually costs $28,000 per pupil]
Despite the relatively small size of the program — there are currently about 1,000 participants — Obama put it on the chopping block shortly after taking office. The move appeased unions, which opposed the program from the start.
Then came the decision in 2009 by Education Secretary Arne Duncan to revoke 216 scholarships from low-income students who had already enrolled. The administration blocked new students from participating.
Duncan’s own department found that scholarship participants achieved the largest gains of 11 programs it studied. And independent studies from Georgetown University and the University of Arkansas confirmed parents’ satisfaction.
These results don’t matter to some Democrats. In Congress, another private-school beneficiary is leading the effort to permanently dismantle the program. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) attended a private school, and like Obama, sent his kids to one, yet he doesn’t support giving inner-city children the same chance at a decent education.
Now that Republicans are mounting a high-profile challenge to Obama and Durbin, this will be a fight worth watching.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.