Education non-fixes…

If you’re interested in education,  and you know you should be,  listen to this John Miller  interview of  Diane Ravitch,  who has no enthusiasm for the testing regimes,  among other things.

D.C. school vouchers dead…

Brit Hume just reported on FOX that the spending bill canceled the D.C. voucher program,  which enabled 1,700 students from poor families to attend private schools.   Unsurprisingly,  their grades improved once out of the clutches of the pathetically bad D.C. public school system.

But the teachers’ unions hate voucher programs as much as they do charter schools.     And Democrats are owned by the labor unions,   so out it went.    As Hume pointed out,  it’s hard to find the killer’s fingerprints,  but a top suspect would be the No. 2 in the Senate,  Dick Durbin,   who is always eager to please any labor union.

So the children who aren’t graduating this year will be dragged back to the public school system,   while Democrats still proclaim their support for the poor,   always expressed in throwing more taxpayer money at the system instead of fixing the problems.

Lying about education…

Remember campaign-Obama touting public education?    Or First Lady Michelle’s little speech to the Education Department,  lavishing praise on them for being such a help to her  —  never mind that it mostly didn’t exist when she was a student?    Remember the couple’s high-flown rhetoric about the importance of school choice,  and voucher systems?

Well, no, because there wasn’t any praise of school choice or vouchers.     It mystifies me why Democrats never suffer for their pretense to care about students,  when their sole interest in education is how much money teachers’ unions are willing to pony up for elections,  and how many volunteers they can provide.

The current $410 billion budget bill has a lovely poison pill, provided by Sen. Dick Durbin  (D-IL),  which would allow the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program to die unless Congress re-authorizes it.  Read the details.

His Oneness has made no comment on the fact that his party will,  by doing NOTHING,  force 2 of his own daughters’ classmates to leave Sidwell for the horrors of  the D.C.  public school system.    Will he be bold enough to rescue Sarah and James Parker  —  and thousands just like them  —  for whom voucher programs represent a helping hand up the ladder of opportunity?

I’m betting he won’t.    After all,  it should,  in his eyes,  be up to the government to determine how well you succeed in life,  not your own efforts, unless,  of course,  you have made it into the elite section.  Vouchers represent an unfair advantage over the millions of students suffering in government schools,  which are now too often  nothing more than day care centers and social service providers.

The rich and the elite will always be able to obtain better arrangements,  but the rest must join the collective.   You must learn only what the government determines you should,  since an uneducated,  uninformed citizenry is far less likely to ask awkward questions,  much less take inconvenient actions.

UPDATE:  Education Secretary, Arne Duncan,  is against vouchers, but suddenly claims to wish to save this one program,   conveniently providing cover for his boss to be of at least 2 different minds.