Inkwell
Hypocrisy in High Places
by Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D
May 13, 2009, 11:51am
Last week the President set aside $12.2 million of his $3.5 trillion budget so 1,716 D.C. Opportunity Scholarship students can stay in their chosen private schools. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, says this is "an ongoing threat to public education in the District of Columbia." Why? Perhaps because the program lets low-income parents do what D.C. elites do: pick their children's schools. And when given the chance, they don't choose D.C. public schools. Well over one-third of Congress Members send their children to private schools. Both President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are the beneficiaries of a private education. So too, are many of the 58 Senators who recently voted down an amendment by Senator John Ensign (R-NV) that would have preserved the Opportunity Scholarship for all D.C. students. More than 80 percent of those Senators attended private secondary and/or postsecondary schools. Close to a third of them (31 percent) attended private high and/or elementary schools.
Sources: Author's table based
on publicly available information from Senators' web bibliographies, the Washington Post Votes Database, Internet
searches, and information provided via telephone by Senators' staff when this
information was not publicly available online.
For now at least a handful of American students in the
nation's capitol have the same educational opportunity politicians and their
children have. Still, more than 38,000 D.C. public schoolchildren from low- and
middle-income families still remain in dysfunctional schools. How much longer
must they languish, causalities of the latest political compromise?
3 Comments
Rockerbabe | May 15, 2009, 1:47pm | #
So what? The private schools were paid for with money that was earned by the parents for the work they do. Public money should be used for public schools and private money for whatever privacy the parents want. Stop asking the general taxpayer for fund private schools with public tax money. Most of these schools only take a narrow type of student; most with diabilities and handicaps need not apply. Kids who do not want to go to college need not apply. Make the DC schools good; stop draining the public trough for private concerns.
Explorer | May 15, 2009, 3:07pm | #
But those parents paid taxes that support the public schools. If they choose not to use them shouldn't they get their money back?
kdn | May 18, 2009, 1:58pm | #
Rockerbabe:
There are a few holes in your argument.
1) "Public" money that you demand be used for public schools comes from private citizens - whether or not they send their kids to public schools. They could send their kids to private schools, or not have kids at all, and they still have to pay for it. Why should they have to pay for public schooling if their kids are already using private?
2) There are actually private schools specifically for disabled and handicapped students - perhaps not enough, but there are some.
3) You argue that we should "make the DC schools good [by not] draining the public trough for private concerns". The problem with that argument is that funding alone is not the answer - in fact, stats show it makes very little difference. The existing bureaucracy means that public schools will always be at a disadvantage - one that some parents just don't want to deal with, period.
4) I personally prefer to pay for usually-better private schools than for usually-failing public ones, since I don't have a choice about the fact that the government WILL take and use my money.