When It Comes to School Choice For Low-Income DC Residents, Obama Offers Crumb (And Is One)

Nick Gillespie | May 7, 2009

President Obama, proud father of two daughters attending private school, has relented as little as possible when it comes to continuing the proven-effective, cost-effective DC school voucher program, which gives 1,700 kids up to $7,500 per year to get the hell out of the DC public school system. From the Wash Post and following a rally for the program yesterday:

President Obama will propose setting aside enough money for all 1,716 students in the District's voucher program to continue receiving grants for private school tuition until they graduate from high school, but he would allow no new students to join the program, administration officials said yesterday.

This is better than what he announced via Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which was simply to tell the voucher participants to take a hike. However, it still amounts to little more than an aristocrat flipping a coin out of a carriage window after running down a child in the street. Whole story here.

To get a sense of how the program helps the kids in it, watch this video:

Belated hat tip: Alan Vanneman, blogger and movie critic extraordinaire, with new work out about Fred Astaire and others.

Comments

Citizen Nothing|5.7.09 @ 10:56AM|#

"However, it still amounts to little more than an aristocrat flipping a coin out of a carriage window after running down a child in the street."

That's how the French Revolution started, according to Charles Dickens. Who plays Madame DeFarge in this one?

|5.7.09 @ 11:03AM|#

Barack Hussein Obama is Swahili-Arabic for Fucking Douchebag Who Hates Kids and Wants Them All to Suffer so Union Succubi will Vote For Him.

|5.7.09 @ 11:05AM|#

Who plays Madame DeFarge in this one?

Hillary? You know she'd still like to take him out.

|5.7.09 @ 11:09AM|#

This is better than what he announced via Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which was simply to tell the voucher participants to take a hike. However, it still amounts to little more than an aristocrat flipping a coin out of a carriage window after running down a child in the street.

This is Presidential Political Negotiation 101. Start off with the most extreme and inflexible position, 100% of what you want. Then, when people who are more-or-less powerless to fight you decide do to call bullshit! you show your "flexibility," "magnanimity," and "willingness to compromise" by giving them the smallest and most reasonable of their demands. In short, try to buy 'em off. Meanwhile, the sycophants in the press trumpet your Solomonic wisdom and daydream about the possibility they could one day kiss your feet.

It's good to be The Obama!

|5.7.09 @ 11:17AM|#

I was at the rally yesterday and not one of the speakers mentioned Barack Obama or Dick Durbin by name or the insidious influence of the teachers' unions at all!

If the advocates of this program and the parents of the affected kids won't call out the president and other politicians who continually stab them in the back, why should anyone else care?

My guess is Chairman O's divide and conquer strategy will work just dandily. Who is going to protest now?

Those accustomed to redistributional economic "justice" and victimhood will be just fine taking what scraps they can get from Obama's table and running. The underlying principles of this issue are lost on those who think that access to elite private academies on the public dole is a matter of "civil rights." (A term which, incidentally, has lost all meaning thanks to its being used to self-righteously justify countless instances of government looting.)

Caesar Obama|5.7.09 @ 11:23AM|#

"This is Presidential Political Negotiation 101. Start off with the most extreme and inflexible position, 100% of what you want. Then, when people who are more-or-less powerless to fight you decide do to call bullshit! you show your "flexibility," "magnanimity," and "willingness to compromise" by giving them the smallest and most reasonable of their demands. In short, try to buy 'em off. Meanwhile, the sycophants in the press trumpet your Solomonic wisdom and daydream about the possibility they could one day kiss your feet.

It's good to be The Obama!"

Well I must say, it doesn't suck.

High Every Body|5.7.09 @ 12:33PM|#

Nick,

You forgot to use a time-proven, effective tactic of PROMOTING YOUR OWN PROTEST AS BEING EFFECTIVE!

Wasn't there a voucher protest, or more accuratly, a protest to continue vouchers, yesterday?

Didn't Obama change his mind the same day of the protest?

Two dots. Connect.

|5.7.09 @ 12:33PM|#

You've actually convinced me that this is a voucher program worth supporting and expanding (despite my initial skepticism). I hope people with influence continue to advocate for this and that it succeeds.
That said, I am unconvinced that Obama "hates kids" and wants to run them over. But who knows, maybe I'm just naive.

High Every Body|5.7.09 @ 12:56PM|#

That said, I am unconvinced that Obama "hates kids" and wants to run them over. But who knows, maybe I'm just naive.

When Obama threw the kids under the bus, I watched and did nothing, because I was not a kid . . .

Jennifer|5.7.09 @ 1:21PM|#

No, Obama doesn't hate kids. I'm sure he sincerely loves them (I'm serious), which is why he hates the voucher program. After all, if you let a kid escape a shithole public school, the school will lose money, which will hurt the kids left behind. Thus you must force poor kids to stay in hellhole public schools for the sake of The Children.

Remember: it takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it.

High Every Body|5.7.09 @ 1:51PM|#

How about this:

When It Comes to School Choice For Low-Income DC Residents, Obama Crumbles Before the Masses, but Only Offers Crumbs In the End

|5.7.09 @ 1:55PM|#

Meanwhile, the sycophants in the press trumpet your Solomonic wisdom and daydream about the possibility they could one day kiss your feet.

I don't think its his feet they're after.

wingnutx|5.7.09 @ 2:10PM|#

Meh, he invalidates this line of criticism while crushing vouchers going forward.

The kids and parents in the video have been rendered inert, so to speak.

JB|5.7.09 @ 2:14PM|#

Obama: "DC public schools are great! That's why I'm sending my daughters to a private school."

The definition of a democrat is this: hypocrite. Do as I say, not as I do.

Fuck all democrats.

Fist of Etiquette|5.7.09 @ 3:48PM|#

I can't believe that Obama would agree to continue to dump taxpayer money into this failed Bush policy at a time when our lawmakers are striving for fiscal restraint.

Paul|5.7.09 @ 4:29PM|#

continue receiving grants for private school tuition until they graduate from high school,

"Grants", huh? Interesting way of looking at it. With "vouchers", it presumes the money is ours and is being returned to us for removing our children from the public school system hence saving the district those monies in education.

But "Grants" turns the concept on its head. Grant is the government giving us money that doesn't normally belong to us.

Paul|5.7.09 @ 4:35PM|#

Who plays Madame DeFarge in this one?

Hillary? You know she'd still like to take him out.

I visualize meetings between Obama and Hillary. I suspect there's a lot of switching of wine glasses while the others back is turned...

|5.7.09 @ 4:58PM|#

Looks Like John Cole and his gang have finally drank the kool-aid.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=20881

That didn't take long.

|5.8.09 @ 10:07AM|#

I just looked up the enrollment statitics for the DC school district on National Center for Education Statitics. I found projections for 2007 which put the public school population at 49K. This means that the kids on the program are only 3% of the students. If only there could be more. But considering that the private schools were projected to have 6K which means that voucher kids make up approx 28% of the private school community. Seems if this program was expanded slowly, to avoid shock to the public system, because eventually you would have to reduce the funding to the public system because so many students wouldn't be in it, but since private school on average costs less than the public school the overall cost of education would be lower and we would be getting a better education while allowing parents to make more decisions in their child's education.