Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder tries to kill a TV ad supporting D.C. school vouchers. President Obama isn't taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled. Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad. The 30-second ad, which has been airing on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and News Channel 8 to viewers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, urges the president to reauthorize the...

The District of Columbia's embattled school-voucher program, which lawmakers appeared to have killed earlier this year, looks like it could still survive. Congress voted in March not to fund the program, which provides certificates to pay for recipients' private-school tuition, after the current school year. But after months of pro-voucher rallies, a television-advertising campaign and statements of support by local political leaders, backers say they are more confident about its prospects. Even some Democrats, many of whom have opposed voucher efforts, have been supportive. At a congressional hearing last month, Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and vocal critic of...

The Democratic Party has battled for universal health care this year, and over the decades it has admirably led the fight against poverty — except in the one way that would have the greatest impact. Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools. President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are trying to change that — and one test for the Democrats...

Choosing Schools in Nebraska by: Allie Winegar Duzett, October 01, 2009 School choice has long been a topic of debate among those concerned with American education. Should the government have a monopoly over education? Or should Americans instead be allowed to use vouchers to send their children to schools that could compete with the government’s public school system? Paul DiPerna of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice recently interviewed 1,200 “likely” Nebraskan voters to see how residents of the state feel about issues with education, including school choice. The study has a 95% confidence level. DiPerna’s study found that Nebraska’s...

Bluegrass Blues by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 10, 2009 It turns out that not many parents in the Bluegrass state want their children to attend public school. Paul DiPerna, author of School Choice Survey in the State: Kentucky’s Opinion on K-12 Education and School Choice, found that people are not happy with the current public school system. This August 2009 study is of Kentucky voters’ opinions on their state’s school system. Strategic Vision, a public relations agency, conducted this survey by making live phone calls to a random sample of 1,200 likely Kentucky voters. Its screening questions were such as to...

DC Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry is likely to be arrested today. Barry, a convert to the voucher cause, will be blocking the entrance to the Department of Education building during President Obama's speech to protest the gradual phasing out of the DC school voucher program, according to organizers. The event, organized by Parents for DC Choice, along with Councilman Kevin Chavous, and Dr. Howard Fuller, will target DOE Secretary Arne Duncan, who won't be in the building.

This summer's health care debate has centered around the creation of a government-run insurance program to compete with those offered by private insurers. President Barack Obama says "public option" isn't intended to end private health insurance, repeatedly telling us that if we like our private plans, we'll be able to keep them. A government plan, he and congressional Democrats insist, will simply provide needed competition for private insurers. And this will be a good thing, of course, because competition leads to better service, lower costs, and more consumer choice. Now a cynic might question the sincerity of the president's newfound...

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty seemed silent and secretive about acting in the self-interest of his own children. Asked at a press conference about where his kids were attending school this academic year, he answered, in essence, “None of your business.” Why this sensitivity? Good school, bad schoolOne of Fenty’s sons started school this year at Lafayette Elementary, a public—read government—school in D.C. But the neighborhood school to which kids at Fenty’s residential address would normally be assigned is West Elementary. Lafayette is in one of the best parts of the city. It gets a 10 out of 10 rating...

Community Organizes for Vouchers by: Anthony Kang, August 25, 2009 On August 20th, dozens of elementary students and parents gathered in front of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in a daytime vigil organized by D.C. Parents for School Choice as part of their SaveThe216 campaign to save the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The D.C. OSP is part of a three-sector education initiative for public schools, charters schools, and OSP participants. The program, which provides low-income children with scholarships of up to $7,500 allowing parents to choose the education they believe is best for their children, was passed...

Washington, DC – On the heels of news that all of the $1billion in funding appropriated for the “Cash for Clunkers” or “CARS” program has been exhausted, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) today stated that any extension of the program must adhere to higher fuel efficiency and greater emissions reductions. Senators Feinstein and Collins, along with Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) previously authored an alternative “Cash for Clunkers” proposal that would have achieved 32 to 38 percent greater oil savings and emissions reductions than the enacted program. Following is a joint statement from Senators Feinstein and Collins: “The...

Education: Barack Obama's choice for education secretary tried to run Chicago schools like a business. As with most monopolies without competition, the result was an inferior product at high cost.Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools since 2001, has garnered much praise for his efforts to improve them. But his efforts have largely amounted to pouring new wine into old bottles with little to show for them. Duncan holds a degree in sociology, not education. He supports higher teacher pay and more training but has done little to loosen the teachers' unions' grip on education. Like the UAW, these...

In many ways, our health care system is broken. Even people satisfied with their own care are nervous about losing it, concerned about rising costs, and frustrated by the failure of government to bring about genuine reform. But the reason Congress has so far been unable to fix our health care problems is that Congress is too busy creating the problems in the first place. That’s why the current proposals emanating from the White House and congressional Democrats won’t work either. Those proposals would hand over the most personal, private undertaking of our lives — health care — to the...

CalPERS expected to report losing nearly one-quarter of investment portfolio The estimated $56.8-billion drop at the U.S.' largest pension fund, the second annual loss in a row, would have a huge effect on what state and local governments must shell out to support retirees. Marc Lifsher July 20, 2009. Reporting from Sacramento -- California's huge government pension fund is expected to report on Tuesday a whopping annual loss of an estimated $56.8 billion, almost a quarter of its investment portfolio. The loss at the California Public Employees' Retirement System for the fiscal year ended June 30 is the second in...

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

Milwaukee is home to America’s most vibrant school-choice program: More than 20,000 students participate, almost all of them minorities. They have made academic gains and boast higher graduation rates than their peers in public schools. They even save money for taxpayers. Inevitably, Democrats in the state capital are trying to eviscerate the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. They’ve wanted to gut school choice for years, at the behest of teacher-union patrons who believe education should be a government monopoly. Until recently, Republicans have stood in the way. That changed following last year’s elections. Now, for the first time since the advent...

Supporters of a celebrated school voucher program in Washington rallied near the mayor's office Wednesday to save the scholarships from being slashed by Congress -- nearly 40 percent of whose members send their own children to private schools. An estimated 1,000 parents, children and community leaders attended the afternoon protest in Washington's Freedom Plaza, where they called on D.C. politicians to help preserve a federal school choice program that currently assists more than 1,700 students with scholarships worth up to $7,500. "Several years ago many of us in this good city worked very hard to get a program going with...

Fighting to save the District's popular school-voucher program, some 1,000 parents, pupils and politicians gathered near Mayor Adrian Fenty's office on Wednesday to protest Congress' plans to end school choice in Washington. That same day, the Senate approved a $4,500 voucher for cars, encouraging citizens to trade in their old automobiles for newer ones that burn less fuel. So, Congress thinks that vouchers for schools are bad, but vouchers for cars are good. Slashing school vouchers spares teachers' unions from competition. On the other hand, car vouchers are supposed to boost demand for cars built by the United Auto Workers....

I celebrated too soon. I heard that the President had changed his mind about school vouchers in D.C. and I was all set to cheer a great "change." Then of course, I hear that he has only suggested that the children already in the program continue to be covered until they graduate high school.*sigh*  Not the ringing endorsement I had hoped for, and wrote about in March. ( http://www.lovehateoprah.com/lovehateoprah/2009/03/is-the-president-getting-wise-to-school-choice.html )But not all hope is lost, I think. After all, Barack Obama has promised to "fund what works." Yes, I can be an eternal optimist in some respects. Here is my latest pie-in-the-sky...

President Obama will seek to extend the controversial D.C. school voucher program until all 1,716 participants have graduated from high school, although no new students will be accepted, according to an administration official who has reviewed budget details scheduled for release tomorrow. The budget documents, which expand on the fiscal 2010 blueprint that Congress approved last month by outlining Obama's priorities in detail, would provide $12.2 million for the Opportunity Scholarship Program for the 2009-2010 school year. The new language also would revise current law that makes further funding for existing students contingent on Congress's reauthorization of the program beyond...

In the recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill, there was a lot of spending and little cutting. Not much cutting, but one important cut that affects the poorest families in Washington, DC. Why would liberals, who claim to be the party of the working poor and the party of social justice, be against a program that only helps the poorest kids in the worst schools? That’s a good question. Why Mr. President?

We have learned a few things from this presidential campaign season and Barack Obama's first 100 days in office.  First, and to our untold horror, we have discovered that Barack Obama can in fact successfully hide who he is and his vision for our country.  Prior to the election, any person of good judgment could readily understand who this man was and where he would likely take this country.  The signs were all there.  Now in power, he enacts his socialist policies in plain sight with little concern that the American public will strenuously object.  So why is it that...

I haven't posted about this until now because I'm still trying to get over the idea that the Obama administration would deliberately victimize minority school kids in Washington, DC over partisan politics. Outrage is simply to mild a term for what was done here. In case our readers have missed this, during the previous administration a pilot voucher program was set up in DC to offer "scholarships" (vouchers) to some 1,700 public-school students in the District of Columbia so they could attend the private schools of their schoice. The program cost just $15 million, which came out to $7,500 per...

One of our correspondents sent a link to this post on the DC voucher program with a very brilliant idea: if the Republican Party is serious about doing something to reach out to the black community by making a gesture on behalf of the 1,700 minority kids Obama has consigned to the worst public schools in America, they’d spearhead an effort to revive the DC voucher program using private funds. $15 million is not a tremendous amount of money to raise if RNC chair Michael Steele would throw his weight behind an effort to get it done, and I would...

As I watch Washington politics I am not easily given to rage. Washington politics is a game and selfishness, out-sized egos and corruption are predictable. But over the last week I find myself in a fury. The cause of my upset is watching the key civil rights issue of this generation — improving big city public school education — get tossed overboard by political gamesmanship. If there is one goal that deserves to be held above day-to-day partisanship and pettiness of ordinary politics it is the effort to end the scandalous poor level of academic achievement and abysmally high drop-out...

Apparently when Barack Obama says he wants to be the "education president" he doesn't mean that he actually wants to provide a quality education to children. What he means is that his administration is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Education Association (i.e., the teachers' unions). Juan Williams has an excellent (and infuriating) column on how the Obama administration is dismantling a very popular and clearly successful school voucher program in the District of Columbia. This is a program that helps get poor kids out of failing D.C. schools and into private schools where they have a much better chance...

President Obama has never been a champion of school choice. Although he committed himself to be known as the Education President, he has never been shy about showing disdain for voucher programs that put parents, especially poor parents, in greater control of their children's education. D.C. has always been the exception, at least to some degree. Upon taking office, Obama made it clear that he would not take any action to end the D.C. voucher system. Facing incontrovertible statistics that demonstrate just how successful the voucher program has been in the Nation's Capital, he could not afford to take a...

The tween girls of the Washington area have transcended differences of race, class and wealth to reach a single, resounding conclusion: They really, really, really, really want to be friends with Malia and Sasha Obama. They lap up every shred of information about the first daughters, dream about meeting them and strategize ways to make it happen. Minivan rides and dinner table conversations are dominated by questions about the girls: What's their favorite food? What kind of dog did they get? Where can I get a coat like Malia's? "Sometimes I go up to my room and I just think,...

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did a public service last week when he visited New York City and spoke up for charter schools and mayoral control of education. That was the reformer talking. The status quo Mr. Duncan was on display last month when he let Congress kill a District of Columbia voucher program even as he was sitting on evidence of its success. In New York City with its 1.1 million students, mayoral control has resulted in better test scores and graduation rates, while expanding charter schools, which means more and better education choices for low-income families. But mayoral control...

Obama’s alone on Tax and Spend stimulus; Obama bucks his supporters and gives into school vouchers; Card Check loses steam.

A member of the Change Movement, (bubba), has received important info regarding the banks being closed, federalization of police forces, road blocks and check points being set up, everyone needing vouchers for food and gas, etc. All this, he says, is set to take place in August or September of this year.

Manzullo Introduces $5,000 Vehicle Voucher Bill to Bolster Auto Sales, Put Americans Back to Work On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo introduced legislation to give Americans a $5,000 voucher to purchase a new vehicle, stimulating our struggling automobile manufacturing industry and putting millions of Americans back to work. The New Automobile Voucher Act of 2009 (HR 1606) would provide a one-time, $5,000 electronic voucher from the U.S. Treasury at the point of sale of a new vehicle. After 6 months, the voucher would drop to $2,500 and would expire on Jan. 1, 2011, or until the $75 billion authorized funding...

WASHINGTON -- A proposal to boost auto sales by offering government-funded discounts to consumers who trade in old cars for new, more efficient models got a boost Wednesday from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the proposal, which also is supported by Detroit auto makers and the United Auto Workers, is coming under fire from some foreign auto makers critical of a provision limiting the vouchers to vehicles built in North America. That limitation would exclude some of the most fuel-efficient cars and trucks sold in the U.S., including the Prius from Toyota Motor Corp. A bill introduced Tuesday by Rep....

Much like the crisis that was too good to ignore as we rushed to spend 4 year's worth of money in 14 days, the AIG bonus debacle was just too rich for Democrats to pass up. Here's a tip: Democrats believe that finding an easy target to prop up as enemy #1 makes them seem superior. Limbaugh yesterday, AIG today. Meanwhile, someone is escaping out the back door with all of your money, in sums that make the AIG bonuses seem like tip jar money!

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York has been a self-styled education mayor. He's made all sorts of proposals and tried several different angles -- some good some not so good -- to improve the education of the kids of New York. He has, though, been a proponent of school choice and this advocacy looks to be a success, at least for the kids of Harlem's District 5. Recently District 5 sponsored the first ever Harlem Education Fair at which 5,000 parents and kids turned out to see what opportunities for school choice can be employed to improve their children's education....

This is one of those stories that just outrages us. From William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal: Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama's new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position. The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison...

Democrats are once again proving that "choice" as it relates to children applies only to killing them, not to parents choosing where to educate them. Sorry, but for pro-choice politicians to argue against school choice shows that they care only about the teachers unions that elect them, and not for the lives of the people they represent. The Washington Post called congressional democrats on their hypocrisy in an editorial today: REP. DAVID R. Obey (Wis.) and other congressional Democrats should spare us their phony concern about the children participating in the District's school voucher program. If they cared for the...

Thursday is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the British naturalist whose theory of evolution has been at the center of American public school wars for almost a century. But Darwin's not to blame for all the fighting—it's the backward system that governs our public schools. The granddaddy of battles on this issue is the 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial," when Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan feuded over a Tennessee law prohibiting any instruction in public institutions that even questioned "the story of Divine Creation." A few years ago, Dover, Pennsylvania was ground zero, as the town tore itself apart...

New Jersey is in deep financial trouble, and government estimates keep get ting worse. The most recent budget deficit prediction tripled the last one, concluding that the state might be $1.2 billion in the hole. The bad news doesn't end there. The economic slowdown is prompting many families who can no longer afford both taxes and private school tuition to move their children into public schools. Catholic elementary schools in the Diocese of Camden, for instance, have lost almost 1,000 students, about 10 percent of their enrollment from last year. And those declining enrollment figures came before the worst of...

We’re pathetic. As a nation, taken together, we are the biggest collection of spoiled, helpless pansies the world has ever known. The converter boxes prove it. You know what I’m talking about. For a year they’ve been pounding it into our heads. Seriously, if you beamed down here from another planet, and based your assessment of what mattered most on what you heard the most about, it would be converter boxes. There have been countless mentions, countless little crawls across the bottom of the television screen, countless panels of “experts” waiting to answer your questions. The background is that the...

The state saves millions of dollars through a program that diverts corporate income taxes to private school vouchers for low-income students, the Florida Legislature's watchdog agency said in a report released Tuesday. Florida's statewide teachers union and Democratic lawmakers questioned that conclusion, but the study was hailed by school choice advocates as affirmation of what they've been saying all along. "We certainly want taxpayers to know we are saving them money, and we hope that our partners in public education benefit from our savings," said Tampa businessman John Kirtley, chairman of the private Florida School Choice Fund, which helps administer...

The efficacy of Catholic schools in urban neighborhoods has been documented time and again, beginning with James S. Coleman's landmark studies in the 1980s. His findings were so devastating at the time that the public-school establishment panicked. School officials heatedly claimed that Mr. Coleman's results were flawed because public schools had to take everyone while Catholic schools could select more talented students -- or at least those who came from more stable homes. But the economist Derek Neal exploded that myth in the 1990s, showing definitively that Catholic-school methods are both class- and color-blind. The stereotypical product of a poor,...

Sorry, Jonah: Your latest column on education merits a failing grade. In “True School Scandal,” Goldberg laments the Right’s current approach to the school-reform debate. He criticizes those who label President-Elect Obama a hypocrite for choosing a private school for his children while at the same time opposing vouchers. Goldberg recommends using this energy to support reformers like D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is trying to shake up the District’s beleaguered public-school system. “Because the [Republican] party supports school-choice vouchers, it’s simply out of the debate,” Goldberg writes. “School choice has much to recommend it. But it’s no silver...

Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee told the D.C. Council yesterday that the District needs to completely rethink its approach to preventing school violence, with a better trained security force but also by teaching students to manage conflicts before they spiral out of control. Rhee spoke to the council a day after fights among rival groups at Anacostia High School left five students injured, including three with stab wounds. Flooding school corridors with more police or private security guards is not the answer, she said. Students feel less safe in schools filled with guards, she said, and dollars are better invested in...

Obamas Choose Elite Private School for Kids Friday, November 21, 2008 8:04 PM WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have chosen Sidwell Friends School for their two daughters, opting for a private institution that another White House child, Chelsea Clinton, attended a decade ago. "A number of great schools were considered," said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama. "In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now." She said Sidwell can provide the security and privacy that Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, will need as...

After Hurricane Katrina flooded its building and scattered its families, the Upperroom Bible Church Academy kept its elementary school open -- barely. The school combined three or four grades into single classrooms since it only had a few students at each grade level. With two teachers devoted to each tiny class, the students received plenty of one-on-one time. This year, with the introduction of a new voucher program in Louisiana, Upperroom is a changed place. The small classrooms in the eastern New Orleans church are packed with students, dozens of them taking advantage of the tuition vouchers.Without the voucher, "my...

America's first charter school opened in Minnesota in 1992. Sixteen years later, there are 4,128 charter schools educating 1.24 million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Another 300 to 400 are expected to open in the coming school year. Charter schools are public schools, but they are very different. The Center for Education Reform's 2008 Annual Survey reports that responding charter schools are one-third smaller than conventional public schools, with about 348 students, compared with 521. They spend less—about $7,625 per student, compared with $9,138 in public schools—and they receive only about 61% of the per pupil...

Schools: While Obama's children enjoy the best education money can buy, he wants to deny inner-city children the education change we can believe in — school choice. He prefers cradle-to-diploma collectivist education. When Barack Obama collected the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers, he told the teachers that support for alternatives to the education monopoly amounted to "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice." He recently told an interviewer that he opposes school choice because "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." Not...

The Dallas Housing Authority begins accepting online applications today for court-ordered rental assistance available to black residents who want to live in predominantly white neighborhoods.The DHA is required to offer the vouchers only to blacks as part of a court settlement to address past discrimination....

Posted on Saturday, August 02, 2008 8:44:19 AM by Soliton don't remember when I first learned about the theory of evolution, but nowadays I find myself reading of it a great deal in the popular press and hearing it discussed in the media. As my daughter enters elementary school, I find myself anxious to discuss with her teachers what they will cover in science class and where in their curriculum they plan to teach evolution. OUR COUNTRY HAS LAWS THAT SEPARATE church and state. Public institutions like schools must be neutral on the subject of religion, as required by the...

Aug. 2--ORLANDO -- In a sign that the road to the White House runs through Florida, the presidential candidates overlapped in the state Friday for the first time, offering contrasting fixes for the economy while confronting racial issues. In Orlando, McCain defended his opposition to affirmative action and support for private-school vouchers in front of a mostly black audience at the National Urban League convention. About 100 miles west, in St. Petersburg, protesters at a racially diverse town-hall meeting held up a banner demanding of Obama, "What about the black community?" The mild but tense confrontations came one day after...