John C. Goodman
With regard to public schools, the same story seems to repeat itself again and again across the country.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has so far funded private-school tuition for nearly 5,000 students, 95% of whom are African-American. They attend religious schools, music and arts schools, even elite college-prep schools, writes Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal. And the results are impressive:
An Education Department-funded study at the University of Arkansas recently found that graduation rates rose 21 percentage points—to 91%, from 70%—for students awarded the scholarship vouchers through a lottery, compared with a control group of those who applied for, but didn’t get the scholarships. For all D.C. public schools, the high-school graduation rate is closer to an abysmal 56%.
So who could be opposed to success like this? President Obama for one. He has proposed eliminating the paltry $20 million scholarship fund from the federal government’s $4 trillion budget. Whereas President Bush invited several of the parents of these children to the White House, President Obama refuses to even meet with them. In addition, the program is:
opposed by almost every liberal group, even the NAACP, and nearly every Democrat in Congress—including Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in Congress but opposes a program that benefits her own constituents.
via Is Growing Inequality Caused By Liberal Public Policies? – Forbes.
