“Budgets are about choices,” stated President Obama in recent remarks to governors about his massive fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the Administration’s priorities than Obama’s decision to once again place the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) on the chopping block while simultaneously growing the Department of Education’s (DOE) budget more than any other federal agency.
In so doing, President Obama is showing low-income D.C. families that his priority is maintaining the unacceptable status quo—at least when it comes to other programs—while bowing to special interest groups like the education unions to eliminate the DCOSP. The Washington Post editorialized yesterday:
Surely, it shouldn’t be among the president’s priorities to single out for attack a tiny federal program that not only works—in the judgment of federal evaluators—but also enjoys bipartisan support. If it is, we trust that [House Speaker John] Boehner [R–OH] would step in, as he did last year, to save a program that D.C.’s poorest families value for their children.
Boehner did in fact save the voucher program last year. The Speaker leveraged last year’s heated budget negotiations to secure a five-year reauthorization of the DCOSP. And as the Post notes today, families “welcomed the certainty.” But once again, poor families in the nation’s capital, home to some of the lowest-performing and least safe public schools in the country, are left to wonder why President Obama has singled out this small, yet effective, school choice program.
The DCOSP has had a tremendous impact on the lives of Washington children. A federally mandated evaluation, published by the DOE, found that use of a voucher to attend private school in D.C. had a statistically significant impact on academic attainment, increasing graduation rates 21 percentage points. And importantly, parents of voucher children are more satisfied with their children’s educational experience and believe that their children are in safer learning environments.
And, at between $8,000 and $12,000, the vouchers are a fraction of the more than $18,000 spent per-pupil in D.C. public schools.
President Obama owes D.C. children an explanation of why their educational futures are once again on the line.
The President’s budget request for the DOE increases the agency’s discretionary budget to nearly $70 billion. Moreover, Obama is pushing lawmakers to spend an additional $60 billion on what the Administration is calling its “education blueprint,” a new pot of federal funding that simply adds a new additional category of immediate funding that includes federally funded education jobs and federal funding for school modernization.
And if those proposals were to be implemented, President Obama will have spent in one term nearly as much as President Bush spent in two, even considering the fact that President Bush nearly doubled the size of the DOE.
And yet President Obama’s priority is to eliminate the $20 million DCOSP. For the sake of D.C. families, the Administration’s budget request and blueprint should remain just that—requests. When it comes to education, policymakers should put a priority on parental choice.
It's all about the unions and paying back his supporters. the unions hate school choice because the majority of us parents would move our children to a school that works for our kids rather than a school that only works for union members. Many great teachers out there but too many have chosen benefits over children.
Linked here:
Priorities: Obama Won't Spend 1/30th of 1% of Bloated Dept. of 'Education' Budget on Inner-City DC Kids
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/04/prioriti…
Education take over was one of the keys to the radical left movement. By imposing federal government power into local education, you indoctrinate the minds of the next generation. I was very young or not even born when that was planned. I'm sure conservative watch dogs back then warned of it. Now it has come home to roost.
It appears that one of the priorities of this Foundation is to keep the government out of running state education issues. Removing federally funding vouchers is a step towards what you believe. So whats the real problem
you folks have with President Obama and the current Administration? We all know that nothing can really be
done without the Senate and Congress anyway….
Wow, this is fantastical, in that it's a fantasy that this program is effective. No evidence is given, no test score comparisons. Eight of the schools being paid aren't even accredited and there is accountability because religious schools are not governed in the same way as public schools. Just a religious view paid for by secular Americans. This is not where my money should be going. If a parent wants to indoctrinate their children they should pay for it themselves. I guess I'd rather pay more to have the future taught to think for themselves.