Liberal Judge Rules Against Private School Vouchers for Poor Kids

Dignitas News Service ^ | August 21, 2014 | Paul M Winters

[dignitasnews]

Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood appeased liberal wishes today and ruled against a school vouchers program designed to provide poor and minority kids in North Carolina the opportunity to attend the same private schools as better offer children. Siding with teachers unions, atheist groups and public education administrators, Hobgood deemed the Opportunity Scholarship program to be unconstitutional. The ruling comes less than a week after the program awarded more than 360 lower-income families with education grants of $4,200 per child, providing their parents the opportunity to place their sons or daughters in a school of their choice.

Fearing that poor and minority parents will opt to move their children out often failing public schools, liberal groups have made fighting school voucher and choice programs a primary focus in their long-running efforts to maintain political hegemony over lower-income and African-American communities. In addition, Democratic Party leaders view opportunity scholarships as a threat to their largest campaign contributors, public employee service unions, and fear that a decrease of power and revenue for these institutions could lead to decreased donations from teachers unions.

Liberal Judge Robert Hobgood.

North Carolina was one of the final southern states to maintain Democratic Party majorities in the wake of overall changing political and social attitudes. After having dominated southern politics during the age of segregation and Jim Crow, the politics of the region began to shift in the 1970's and 1980's as Republican Party gains helped change the face of the south. North Carolina, home to disgraced former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards, had been able to hold off the Republican wave until finally giving way to GOP state majorities in 2012. In 2013, Republican state lawmakers swiftly implemented the school choice program and set aside $10 million to provide opportunity scholarships to lower-income families. Many conservatives and Republicans view school choice programs as key to reversing the long-standing inequities in education and opportunities that plague many in the black community. GOP advocates also see vouchers as a way to strengthen the overall public school system, by subjecting often corrupt and ineffective inner-city education bureaucracies to competition, thus forcing them to make much-needed reforms to make public schools more effective and desirable options for lower-income parents. Conservatives also argue that programs will help the reign in budget shortfalls as better-performing private schools generally cost less per-pupil than poorer performing public schools.

AmericanFederationForChildrenPSA (via YouTube) Milton Friedman Foundation Video

The initial $10 million was the start of the program and designed for the 2014-2015 school term. They went on to allocate more money to help expand the program beyond this school year and provide more lower-income parents the same educational choices that middle and upper-class families enjoy. While liberal-progressives and Democrats have been successful in demonizing Republicans in the eyes of African-American voters on a number of issues, the school choice movement has been shown to break down many misconceptions of black voters and the left sees this issue as a threat to their monopoly of the black vote. School voucher programs are viewed very favorably by black parents and have proven very effective at raising the math and science scores of children who have taken advantage of these programs elsewhere in the nation. Fearing that a spread of these programs could threaten to weaken the nearly 90 percent share of the African-American vote, defeating opportunity scholarship programs have become a primary focus of Democratic Party strategy.

Under opportunity scholarship programs, families are given the opportunity to shop around and choose the school they feel would best serve their child. Liberal groups argue that because students must go through an application process this amounts to a discriminatory practice. Although private schools do often limit the number of students they accept to maintain proper teacher to student ratios, there have been virtually no complaints from parents and children who participate in similar programs in various Republican controlled states nationwide.

Under the leadership of Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana has embarked on a similar school voucher program and seen great enthusiasm from parents participating in the program. The Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Louisiana Federation for Children conducted a survey of parents in the program and found that 91 percent of parents were satisfied with their child's new school and academic performance, and a full 98 percent said their child felt safe and welcomed at their opportunity scholarship school.

Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina President Darrell Allison vowed to continue the fight.

While these numbers are welcoming news to parents and many lawmakers, this has sent a wave of fear throughout traditional Democratic Party allies. Control of education standards (or lack thereof) and more importantly the tax revenue from public education, has been a primary source of Democrat power in the inner city and minority precincts. Displeasure has also been expressed by liberal-leaning atheist groups who fear that further exposure to religion in the form of parochial schools will reverse their efforts to reverse Christian and Church influence on the black community. Left-wing education advocates also fear that school choice programs threaten to weaken efforts to impose Common Core education programs nationwide.

Despite today's ruling, school choice advocates are confident that the programs will ultimately prevail. Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina President Darrell Allison called Judge Hobgood's decision a "temporary roadblock" citing his belief that higher courts will side with the parents and reinstate the voucher programs and vowed to continue the fight to prevent liberal activists from denying poor and minority kids the opportunity to attend private schools.

 

By Paul M Winters Dignitas News Service

Sources:

WRAL NewOrleansTimesPicayune AmericanFederationForChildrenPSA (via YouTube)

[tanknetter]

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a society where people will take to the streets in mass protest, and riot, over the death of someone like Mike Brown, but not say a word when at least 360 kids are denied access to a program that demonstrably helps kids avoid and escape the life circumstances that contributed to Brown getting killed.

[dignitasnews]

I felt that way for a long time, but there are small (albeit very small) glimmers of hope. I did see an interesting bit of data from the 2012 elections. Young black males (18-29)...in 2008, Obama got 94% of this vote, McCain only 6%. In 2012, however, Obama got 80% of black men 18-29, Romney got 19%. That is pretty significant.

http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/

[B4Ranch]

>>$4,200 per child<<

Hmmmmmmm. Let’s see. I got me 5 kids goin to dat school. How much money are you gonna gimme? $21 thousand dollars! No way, Baby. Oh Mamma, I love my kids! Let me count da ways.