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Politics : Socialized Education - Is there abetter way?
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From: greatplains_guy2/18/2012 3:01:45 AM
1 Recommendation   of 1513
 
Obama's War on School Vouchers
The president downplays school choice in his new $3.8 trillion budget.
FEBRUARY 14, 2012

By JASON L. RILEY

In his State of the Union address last month, Obama spoke about the importance of kids staying in school and even urged states to raise the dropout age to 18. So it's passing strange that his new $3.8 trillion budget provides no new money for a school voucher program in Washington, D.C., that is producing significantly higher graduation rates than the D.C. public school average.

The Opportunity Scholarship Program offers vouchers to low-income students to attend private schools. A 2010 study published by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas found that the scholarship recipients had graduation rates of 91%. The graduation rate for D.C. public schools was 56%, and it was 70% for students who entered the lottery for a voucher but didn't win.

Because the president's teachers union allies are opposed to school choice for poor people, Mr. Obama ignores or downplays these findings. He repeatedly has tried to shutter the program, even though it is clearly advancing his stated goal of increasing graduation rates and closing the black-white achievement gap.

The good news is that House Speaker John Boehner, who went to bat for the voucher program last year when the Obama administration attempted to phase it out, said yesterday through a spokesman that the funding cuts won't stand. The bad news is that we have a president who is more interested in doing right by teachers unions than doing right by ghetto kids confined to failing schools.

To read more stories like this one, please subscribe to Political Diary.

online.wsj.com
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