Opponents of school choice have long made the argument that measures such as the provisions of education vouchers or tuition tax credits to the parents of children who want to opt out of poor quality public schools would siphon funds from the public schools and erode the tax base they need to survive. Public schools, they argue, already suffer from inadequate spending and need every bit of support they can get. Despite the fact that millions of children across the nation are trapped in manifestly failing public schools, parents seeking an alternative for their children should still be required to pay entirely out of pocket for the privilege of opting out — in addition to the significant taxes they already fork over to support the local schools.

The hypocrisy of this argument (most often made by members of a monopolistic education establishment more interested in self-preservation than in the quality of education provided to our children) has just been laid bare by some of the best investigative reporting in recent memory. According to a recent series of articles in the Daily Caller, an astonishing number of the 88,000 children attending D.C. public and charter schools actually live in Maryland, and D.C. Public Schools officials are doing virtually nothing to enforce residency requirements for enrollment. The reporters found that as many as 40 percent of the cars observed dropping off and picking up students (DCPS only provides busing for children with special needs) had Maryland license plates. Follow up with publicly available records confirmed that the children resided with one or both parents outside D.C. public school boundaries in Maryland.