Yesterday's Wall Street Journal has an article about two classmates of President Obama's daughters who will be directly effected by a spending bill to be voted on in the Senate this week. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves it. This provision was put in the bill by Dick Durbin. It allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Because you are ending the program without actually doing anything, the inner-city moms and dads don't realize that you are cutting one of their lifelines.
Sarah and James Parker currently receive $7,500 voucher from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship. According to the article:
"Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. "I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards," she says. "I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell." It's not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt's students are proficient in reading or math.
That's the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people's children -- mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos -- trapped in schools where they'd never let their own kids set foot."
Voters in the inner cities that have poor school systems need to realize who is preventing their children from getting a good education. Unfortunately one of the trademarks of this administration is that they are in the pocket of big labor--the Teachers Union is included in that. It would not surprise me to see the education of these two and many other children thrown under the bus in order to appease the Teachers Union.
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