Rally for DC School Choice

Mary Katharine Ham, The Weekly Standard, with this pix and more. Heritage as well. Put Kids First! NRO:

These families, who recently applied to enter the program, had recently been told that their students had received a scholarship.

But the Washington Post reports that the administration will now call for the scholarship program to be continued for students who are currently participating. If this happens, it will avoid the p.r. disaster of seeing disadvantaged children, including two of the Obama children’s classmates, pulled from their private schools. But it will deny current and future D.C. families the same power that President Obama and Secretary Duncan take for granted.

If the purpose is to “fund what works,” why shouldn’t more kids be given the opportunity to participate in a program that has proven to improve the reading achievement of disadvantaged kids? To paraphrase Virginia Walden Ford of D.C. Parents for School Choice at today’s rally, we shouldn’t be satisfied until all families — regardless of background — can choose a quality school for their children

More: FoxNews:

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is slated to end next year because of a provision slipped into Congress' $410 billion omnibus spending bill by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., whose children attend private school.

The amendment has angered parents who say the vouchers have raised performance and rescued students from one of the country's worst public school systems.

"I saw dramatic change. The change is not even comparable to what a parent could do alone," said Ingrid Campbell, a single mother of three who has two daughters in the opportunity program.

And Dennis Byrne, Chicago Daily Observer, on the pernicious labor cartel, in Chicago and around the country:

But nothing says more about the union’s self-aggrandizement at the expense of others than the heavy clout they have applied to deny low-income and minority children the quality education that their parents believe they deserve. I refer, of course, to the Obama administration’s and congressional Democrats’ efforts to shut down Washington D.C.’s school voucher program. Despite the demonstrated success of the program that provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 children to attend private schools, Congress—genuflecting to the powerful teachers’ union—voted in March to phase out the program after the 2009-10 school year unless Congress and the D.C. City Council resuscitate it before then.

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