Milwaukee School Vouchers: Democrat Party Kowtows To Another Special Interest

I know lots of teachers. Many of my friends are teachers. They know I am a friend to good teachers everywhere.

I am also, however, an enemy of unions generally and teachers' unions specifically. Their goal is not the improvement of education, but the guarantee of employment and ever-increasing pay and benefits for all teachers, regardless of performance. Additionally, these folks see their union positions as opportunity to exert political influence.

Brendan Miniter called school choice "the new Civil Rights struggle." Indeed, it is. Given the disintegration of low-income families--especially minority families--school choice and the opportunities a good education affords may be the best chance many of these children have.

Democrats and teachers' unions want to kill every voucher, scholarship, school choice program they can. They already did away with the one in Washington DC--a program that helped thousands of low-income students avoid failing schools. Milwaukee's wildly successful voucher program is next on their list.

At the National Press Club last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he opposed school choice: “Let me explain why. Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. . . . But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent down.” It was a bizarre statement: Why not simply let more than 1 or 2 percent enjoy the benefits of school choice? In Milwaukee, they actually do. It’s the largest urban school-choice program in the country, dwarfing the size of the one in Washington, D.C., whose de-funding by congressional Democrats has drawn so much criticism. Roughly one in five of Milwaukee’s school-age children receive vouchers. All of them must fall below an income threshold. Researchers say that the program is beginning to show systemic effects. In other words, it doesn’t merely help its participants. It also gives a lift to non-voucher students because the pressure of competition has forced public schools to improve.

The principle is choice--liberty, really--applied to education. When I speak to union-enthusiast teaching friends of mine, they talk endlessly about some new initiative or program that will make public education better.

The point of adding choice and competition to education is that these things will introduce the flexibility and incentive into education that will empower teachers and administrators and parents and students to find the education that best suits them.

One-size-fits-all public education doesn't achieve the egalitarian utopia in which its adherents believe, it holds the smart kids back and leaves those who need extra or specialized attention behind.

If the Democrat party really were, as it says, "for the children," it would resist the influence of campaign contributions from teachers' unions and wholeheartedly endorse choice in education.

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Conservatives & Obama

David Horowitz, '60's era radical, now conservative, & author of one of the books I'm currently reading, Indoctrination U., wrote an excellent take on how conservatives ought to view the election of Obama.

Today America welcomes Barack Obama as the first black president in its 232-year history. How should conservatives think about these events?

First we have to recognize and then understand that whatever happens in the Obama presidency, this Inauguration Day is a watershed moment in the history of America and a remarkable event in the history of nations, and thus a cause for all of us who love this country, conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, to celebrate.

Second, in order to do this as conservatives -- as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. If Americans now have accepted an African American to lead their country in war and peace that is in part because an hysterically maligned Republican made two African Americans his secretaries of state. And if, after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, race has continued to be a divisive factor in our politics over the last 40 years that is because the generation of Sharpton and Jackson and their liberal supporters have made it so. . . .

Only time will tell how successfully Obama manages to unite the nation in the face of the crises and enemies which confront it. . . . But today celebrating their new president are millions of Americans who never would have dreamed of celebrating their president before. Millions of Americans -- visible in all their racial and ethnic variety at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday -- have begun to feel a patriotic stirring because they see in this First Family a reflection of themselves.

The change is still symbolic and may not last. A lot depends on what President Obama will do, which is not a small question given how little is still known about this man and how little tested he remains. Some of this patriotism may be of the sunshine variety -- in for a day or a season, when the costs are not great. Or more cynically: in to show that their hatred for America is really just another form of political "dissent." Yet whatever the nature of these changes they cannot for now be discounted. Consider: When President Obama commits this nation to war against the Islamic terrorists, as he already has in Afghanistan, he will take millions of previously alienated and disaffected Americans with him, and they will support our troops in a way that most of his party has refused to support them until now. When another liberal, Bill Clinton went to war from the air, there was no anti-war movement in the streets or in his party's ranks to oppose him. That is an encouraging fact for us in the dangerous world we confront.

If it seems unfair that Barack Obama should be the source of a new patriotism -- albeit of untested mettle -- life is unfair. If the Obama future is uncertain and fraught with unseen perils, conservatives can deal with those perils as they come. What matters today is that many Americans have begun to join their country's cause, and conservatives should celebrate that fact and encourage it.

Incidentally, and as an aside, becoming a conservative is what happens to all "good" radicals.

The "bad" ones go to work as "professors" of "elementary education" at the University of Illinois at Chicago and ghostwrite books for successful politicians.

(h/t Scott L.)


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Democrat Dust-up: Race and School Choice

For years, Lincoln's Republican party, by virtue of having freed the slaves, was the party of newly enfranchised black Americans. Just as African-Americans now vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, they once voted for Republicans.

This began to change under FDR as his social programs appealed to many ethnic minorities--not just those of African descent. This shift was solidified during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson--as Hillary Clinton pointed out.

It appears many African-Americans finally tired of liberal patronization. After decades of liberal self-congratulation and credit taking for Civil Rights gains (look at us! see how enlightened and open minded we are!), blacks finally see it for what it really is--supremely condescending nanny-statism. Hillary's statement is just another example of what President Bush called the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

From Drudge:

• RASMUSSEN: Clinton leads Obama among white voters 41% to 27%
• Obama leads Clinton among African-American voters 66% to 16%

Could this be a break-up in the liberal-Democrat coalition? And if black Americans finally see Democrat's true colors, is it possible other traditionally Democrat-voting minorities will also break from stereotype politics?

For a long time we've wondered about what type of conservative message might appeal to minorities who typically do not vote Republican. One strong possibility is school choice and vouchers. (We wrote about it here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Public education overwhelmingly fails minority students. Given the opportunity, minority parents--especially African-Americans--have taken their child and voucher and gone to better schools. With the Democrats and adversarial teachers' unions joined at the hip, this is an opportunity where Republicans are uniquely positioned to capitalize. What's more, it would not be a case of pander-politics. Conservatives already believe in vouchers and school choice, they simply need to explain how they benefit minority students.


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