Scholarships For Washington, D. C. Students

One of the things in the stimulus bill that did not get a lot of attention was the elimination of the school voucher program (D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program) in Washington, D. C.  There was a lot of irony in the fact that Congress was eliminating this program, since very few (if any) Congressmen who live in Washington, D. C., send their children to public schools.  Since that program was terminated (actually Congress simply stated that no new children could sign up for the program), a number of Congressmen have been working to reinstate it.

On March, 10, the Washington Post reported on those efforts.  Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) has been the leader in this fight, but has not been able to get his bill to the floor.  Meanwhile, George Will reported Sunday in the Washington Post that Education Secretary Arne Duncan in speaking to a group this month in Alabama:

“…vowed to unleash on public schools legions of lawyers wielding Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They supposedly will rectify what he considers civil rights violations, such as too many white students in high school Advanced Placement classes.”

That’s very nice, I guess, but George Will points out:

“No segregationist politician is blocking schoolhouse doors against D.C. children; congressional Democrats are. Until Duncan and the talkative president he serves speak against the congressional Democrats who are strangling the District’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, he should spare us the exhibitionism of explaining problems of social class in the ’60s vocabulary of civil rights violations.”

It seems that one of the places to start providing racial equality in education might be in Washington, D. C.