OpEd Contributor
Obama's hope only works for 1,700 D.C. school kids
By: Derek Hunter, OpEd Contributor
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March 30, 2009
Those Americans waiting for President Barack Obama to stand up to his party and buck his supporters on some issue, any issue, have to wait no longer…sort of.
Two days after signing into law the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, he, through spokesman Robert Gibbs, said he would make sure part of it is overturned. Why sign a flawed bill into law is a question for another day, but what he said, what it means and whom it affects is one worth exploring.
Through stealth maneuvers, Democrats added, then rejected, a Republican attempt to remove a provision of the bill that would effectively kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides up to $7,500 to about 1,700 poor families.
The scholarships allow these families to send their children to the same high quality private schools many Members of Congress, as well as Barack and Michelle Obama, send their children.
There was no direct vote to kill the program. That would have been too obvious, but the bill Obama signed contained a provision that requires Congress to reauthorize the program, and the D.C. City Council to do the same.
With both controlled by Democrats, and Democrat education policy controlled by teachers unions, a vote to reauthorize it is about as likely as the sun rising in the west. This is effectively setting the program on a path to die after the next school year.
Why must this program end? Why must these children suffer? Because their success would run risk of exposing one of the biggest lies going in this country – that a supposed lack of money is the only thing holding back the quality of public education.
Education is not underfunded by any sane unit of measure. We can argue all day about how the money is spent, but not that enough is being spent. In 2006, the last year for which there is data, the per-pupil spending in this country was $9,266. Shouldn’t children get a pretty good education for that amount of money, especially considering much of the rest of the world does better for significantly less?
If money were the yardstick by which to measure success, the D.C. public schools would be cranking out a string of geniuses unrivaled in human history. It is not.
The Department of Education says the District spends more than $14,000 per student each year on education, more per student than just about anywhere else, yet produces some of the lowest test results and highest dropout rates in the country.
But, while Rome burns, the teachers unions fiddle. They fight any attempt to improve quality or accountability for teachers that doesn’t involve spending ever more money for them and stopping school choice for parents.
Worse than congressional and union callousness was the president’s willingness to allow it to happen. Obama – who attended an elite private school in Hawaii on a similar scholarship - signed the bill into law apparently with no sense of irony or hypocrisy.
Now the White House says he won’t allow the program to expire because “it wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system.” That translates to “we won’t deny these kids a chance because it would be disastrous for us politically, but no more kids can get this chance. We’ll just wait for it to fade away.”
Remember, too, that the bill Obama signed also denies children the exact same opportunity he’s affording his own daughters. But hypocrisy is nothing new to the old guard on education policy.
I hope Obama is better than his word on this, that education is an area where he will stand up to his party for the greater good, allowing this program to continue and expand.
Let’s hold his feet to the fire to ensure these 1,700 students and more get the same chance in life he did. Anything less would mean the end of hope for too many.
Derek Hunter is federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform.
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