Editorial Board
Investors Business Daily
February 4, 2015
Budget: President Obama proposed a gargantuan $4 trillion 2015 budget on Monday, with beefy 7% spending increases for most of his pet social programs. So why did he cut one successful program for poor kids to the bone?
Every Child Left Behind
Yes, Obama’s in a spending mood. But he couldn’t find the money to fund a tiny, $20 million program that provides vouchers for poor and mostly black and Hispanic children in Washington, D.C. It is one of the few programs that Obama supports terminating, even though the vouchers are a microscopic bit of the massive federal spending machine.
This is one of the rare cases of a government program that actually works. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, as it is called, began under President George W. Bush in 2003 and has allowed thousands of children to enroll in private and Catholic schools by helping cover tuition costs, $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
Parents love the wide range of educational alternatives it provides their children, especially because many D.C. public schools are notoriously rotten and even dangerous. Research by Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas found that the program raised graduation rates of voucher students by 21 percentage points (from 70% to a whopping 91%).
“Every year since he has been president, Barack Obama has tried to shut down this education program,” Center for Education Reform President Kara Kerwin says. “He just doesn’t support private school choice.”
The irony here is that Obama is rich enough that he and Michelle can afford to send their own kids to the elite private academy Sidwell Friends.
His girls sit in the same classrooms as some of the kids who benefit from the program he wants to shut down.
If he has his way, only the rich will be able to attend schools like this. Remember that the next time the president gives a lecture on income inequality and fairness.
The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. This is a president who keeps lecturing us on supporting “the science.” The science tells us indisputably that these voucher programs improve educational achievement.
But Obama has decided to side with teacher unions, not minority kids. So much for putting children first.
This is a disgrace. Every year four times as many D.C. minority children sign up for the voucher program than there are funded slots available.
Republicans in Congress should expand this program and give even more kids a shot.