On the heels of a gathering of more than 1,000 recipients of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship in the heart of Washington, D.C. today, the Obama administration has alighted upon yet another squirrelly position on the program:
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 its current June 2010 expiration date. Under the Obama proposal, further congressional action would not be necessary, and current students would automatically receive grants until they finish school.
Translation: "Let me be perfectly clear. Everyone is going to know I'm killing this demonstrably effective program because of the political debt I owe to teachers' unions, which I of course assured everyone would not dictate my education policies. So let's just extend this enough to get people off my back even if it means taking the morally abhorrent position that the program is good enough for these succeeding, satisfied kids and parents, but no one else should be allowed to be similarly successful and satisfied, lest I lose my gazillions in union support. The children are our future, as long as they're not putting their grubby little hands on money that should be going to NEA members. Thank you, and God bless America."
Before now, Obama had promised that his Sec. of Education Arne Duncan would "use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works." That was shortly before Duncan rescinded scholarships for next year's recipients, effectively killing the program off with even more enthusiasm than Congress, which had scheduled it to die quietly at the end of next school year.
All of this on top of the Department of Education study that indicated the program, err, works. A study which the Washington Post writer for this story unfairly dismisses as indicating "limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math," despite the Washington Post editorial page using the same data to justify editorializing in the program's favor.
Of course, that study came after Duncan had made the statement that it didn't make sense "to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning," which I guess is the position we're back to now? Too bad for this year's and future scholarship recipients, who are asked to rely only on the reforms sanctioned by Duncan's repertoire. Duncan, incidentally, was the CEO of the Chicago Public School system during the time that Barack Obama was noticeably not sending his children there. Aren't you encouraged?
Here's Barack Obama, former private-school scholarship kid himself, in 2007 on where his kids went to school in Chicago, and what that means for the "ordinary parents" and kids at the rally today:
My kids have gone to the University of Chicago Lab School, a private school, because I taught there, and it was five minutes from our house. So it was the best option for our kids. But the fact is that there are some terrific public schools in Chicago that they could be going to. The problem is, is that we don't have good schools, public schools, for all kids. A US senator can get his kid into a terrific public school. That's not the question. The question is whether or not ordinary parents, who can't work the system, are able to get their kids into a decent school, and that's what I need to fight for and will fight for as president.
That is what he needs to fight for, and could fight for in the form of this program, but as Jim Geraghty often says, every Barack Obama statement has an expiration date. Sorry, kids. This jug of hope is past its drink-by date.
It's hard to tell yet how this will affect the program's reauthorization going forward. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has indicated tepid support for the program, met with Sen. Joe Lieberman this week. Lieberman's committee will hold the evaluation of the program in the next couple of weeks, and more solid dates for that and the House-side hearing will be forthcoming. School-choice activists will have children and parents on the Hill during the hearings, some of them testifying before Congress.
Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. Councilman who helped bring charter schools to the District and is a school-choice proponent, has been talking to Duncan and his staff about supporting the program.
"He says he'd like to see more local support. I think the local support is evident," he said, gesturing to the large crowd at Freedom Plaza.
Chavous and other activists are working on a letter from D.C. Council members to Congress to make that local support explicit, he said. Councilman Marion Barry, one of the program's most vocal local proponents, spoke at the rally, declaring that leaving kids in failing schools is a social injustice activists must fight against, ferociously.
Other speakers had a lighter touch, such as Maudeen Cooper, President of the Greater Washington Urban League, who repeatedly voiced her support for public schools, but noted that promised reforms moving through the slow gears of government do not help children in the here and now, as the scholarship program does.
"It's not about abandoning public schools. It's about saying, 'what can I do today?'" she said.
Obama must have heard her inspiring call to arms and decided, "I know! I'll obfuscate!"
