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The Daily Signal
A Way For
Lawmakers to Show They Believe Black Lives Matter
Stephen Moore
January 15, 2016
The great Jack Kemp used to say about politicians that “voters don’t
care what you know until they know that you care.”
Congressional conservatives say they care about the poor and
minorities, but do they really?
We have a test case in front of us right now over whether congressional
leadership will reauthorize and then hopefully expand the Washington,
D.C., school voucher program. Obama is against the program though its
$25 million budget is less than 0.1 percent of federal education
spending.
The Opportunity Scholarship Program was created in 2004 and was the
handiwork of John Boehner and President George W. Bush. The results
have been uniformly positive for these families.
But something unforgivable happened at the end of last year. House
leadership admits it “inadvertently” left out the program of the $1
trillion omnibus spending bill that passed late last year. Leadership
forgot to fund the voucher program for poor black and Hispanic parents
because apparently it was too busy funding the Export-Import Bank to
help Boeing.
So amazingly, about the only domestic program that got eliminated was
the one that matters the most. Message: Congressional conservatives
don’t care about these families any more than the liberals do—which is
very little.
The very first order of business for this Congress should be to
immediately reauthorize the D.C. school voucher program. Do it now.
Hold a rally in front of the Capitol with the thousands of minority
parents and kids who depend on these vouchers. Stand with them. Fight
with them loudly and proudly.
A first-rate education for the nation’s poor children is a righteous
fight and, as Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education
Reform, puts it, “the civil liberties issue of our time.”
What is for sure is that liberals will never stand with these parents.
They can’t because the teachers unions won’t let them and the political
contributions would dry up. So union brass and liberal leaders oppose
programs that take control from Big Labor and instead empower parents.
It’s all about power and money for the education blob. The opposition
has nothing to do with what’s right for the kids. Nothing exposes the
spectacular hypocrisy of liberals more than their brick wall opposition
to education voucher programs.
Meanwhile, their opposition in Congress refuse to call them out on
this. Why not?
The D.C. voucher program has helped thousands of very low-income and
mostly black kids opt out of the often dismal public D.C. schools and
opt into high-performing private and Catholic schools.
A major assessment study funded by the Department of Education found
graduation rates for the students with vouchers are an estimated 12
percentage points higher than for those who didn’t get the vouchers.
More of the kids go on to college—some to Harvard and Yale.
The odds are high that a large percentage of these kids from good
schools but poor neighborhoods will be financially successful and rise
into the middle class or higher. Is there a better way to reduce income
inequality?
The most powerful evidence is to meet these kids because the impressive
results hit you right in the face. The parents almost universally
describe the vouchers with words like a “godsend” and a “lifesaver for
my children.”
Conservatives should sit down with Joseph Kelley, a single father with
several kids who have received vouchers.
“The public schools in my neighborhood aren’t just extremely poor
academically, they are physically unsafe,” he told me. “At our
neighborhood school there was cursing and shoving with a total
breakdown in any discipline. Total mayhem. I couldn’t expose my son to
this environment or I would have wound up hurting some of those
bullying kids.”
How many politicians would send their kids to such schools?
I know one who doesn’t. President Barack Obama. The Obamas live in
public housing in Washington, D.C., but they are rich so they send
their daughters to the very elite, expensive private school called
Sidwell Friends. The president’s daughters sit next to some of the
voucher kids. But Obama wants to kill the program, because apparently
only rich people should get to go to the finest schools.
Rather than shut down this program it should be expanded dramatically
in D.C. and bring the program to cities with failing schools all over
the country. The goal should be for every parent who wants a voucher to
get one.
We spend more than $30 billion on the Department of Education every
year and Congress even gave DOE a pay raise last year. DOE spending has
had zero impact on test scores, as the graph shows.
This is the perfect political fight for these times. House Speaker Paul
Ryan should announce tomorrow that there will be no budget this year
without vouchers. If Obama wants to shut down the government to stop
this from happening let him.
What better way for congressional conservatives to show that they
believe black lives matter.
Read this article with a chart, and others, at The Daily Signal
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