The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is fed up with President Barack Obama and his administration. The 43-member caucus, led by Representative Maxine Waters (D-Ca), says that Barack Obama is not listening to the needs of African Americans on the important issues of the day. The nation’s first African American president, a candidate who carried 95 percent of the African American vote (versus 4% for his opponent) in the 2008 presidential election, is alienating the African American lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and the lawmakers are threatening to do the unthinkable, vote …
Opponents of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program have been losing the war of public opinion since last February when President Barack Obama and the Democrats on Capitol Hill voted to phase out the program. Even liberal political pundits like MSNBC’s Chris Mathews have expressed their outrage over the decision to deny thousands of families in Washington the opportunity to choose a safe and effective school for their children. Opponents of the scholarships have used every reason they can muster to defend their position. They argued that the program doesn’t work, …
A promising performance-pay program is under attack in the Boston public school system, which is trying out some new and innovative school reforms. The plan was to allow Advanced Placement teachers to receive $100 bonuses for each student who passes an AP exam, and teachers could be rewarded up to $3,000. But the Boston Herald reports that the Boston Teachers Union is trying to put an end to the innovative plan: Grinchlike union bosses are blocking at least 200 of Boston’s best teachers from pocketing bonuses for their classroom heroics …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOthXdxJbxc[/youtube] Yesterday, Governor Jeb Bush praised President Obama for ‘being on the right track’ regarding education reform. We think there’s room for improvement when it comes to President Obama’s education stance, although he has promised to ‘use what works’ when considering reforms. However, if the President was true to his word he would have intervened when Congress voted to phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in April, which ultimately resulted in 216 low-income D.C. families being told the federal government was rescinding the scholarships that they had already been awarded earlier in the year: …
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the same Sen. Durbin who put the language in last February’s Omnibus spending bill to eliminate the D.C.Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), now says he might be open to reauthorizing the program. The Wall Street Journal Reports: I have to work with my colleagues if this is going to be reauthorized, which it might be,” said Mr. Durbin at an appropriations hearing Tuesday morning. He also said that he had visited one of the participating private schools and understood
In a cover story today, the Washington Examiner highlights the continuing exodus from traditional public schools in the D.C. school system: By Monday’s first school bell, charters project at least 28,000 students, or about 2,400 more than last year, while D.C. Public Schools expect about 45,000, or 2,000 fewer than in spring.dc This year’s decline follows a trend that has continued for decades. According to the Examiner, nearly 30,000 students have left the city’s public school system. Much of the exodus has been into the charter school system, which has …
Support for school choice in Washington, D.C. continues to grow. The latest national voice to call for saving the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Check out this Hardball interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFUyqr6QsFY[/youtube] Mr. Matthews says: “These opportunity scholarships should be maintained.” Later in the interview, Mr. Matthews makes an interesting point about how the opportunity to attend a private school made a big difference in the life of Judge Sotomayor: “Cardinal Spellman high school is one of the reasons why this woman, Sotomayor got …
As this video makes clear, the dulcet tones of President Obama’s education policy may have been music to the ears of liberals and some conservatives alike, but the D.C. voucher issue has proven that the President’s grand declaration about how Education Secretary Arne Duncan should make decisions is merely vapid rhetoric. Heritage has covered this issue well. Read a history of the successful program by Heritage Scholar Dan Lips here, a fact sheet here, and several blog posts here. We recently wrote on the Foundry: The Department of Education knows [the D.C. …
A month ago, Obama explored the notion of nationalizing the banks under the Swedish model. Instead of the Swedish banking model, Obama should look at the school voucher program in Sweden for inspiration. The Pacific Research Institute recently had a video Op-Ed on the New York times Web site explaining how well the voucher program works in Sweden. The voucher program in Sweden has broad bipartisan support and has defeated the “status quo” in education and the children, as well as parents, are reaping the benefits. In the video, Stockholm …
