Posted on 10/27/2009 5:28:47 AM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
Kevin Chavous is an African American and former Democratic city council member from Washington, D.C. He says he’s an Obama supporter, but he is distinctly unhappy with the president. Elections may have consequences, but no one expected that the White House would be so brazenly petty as to allow poor minority children in the nation’s worst school district to become the victims of political score-settling.
That’s exactly what happened when the Obama administration killed off the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program several months ago. Of course, if the White House thought that it could pay off the powerful teachers’ unions, and that the 750 kids in the program would be powerless to fight back, they made a serious miscalculation. Though Afghanistan, the economy, health care, and many other issues have been sucking up all the national-media oxygen, the school-choice efforts on the ground and in D.C. and in the halls of the Congress have been incessant and unyielding since the program was abruptly terminated.
Chavous has made some strange friends in his quest to bring school choice back to D.C. On this particular evening, he’s gripping the podium at the Heritage Foundation — one of the conservative movement’s brain trusts — and expressing his frustration over a recent meeting he had with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
“I said to him, ‘If you don’t get it, you don’t get it!’” Chavous recalls. What he finds particularly galling is that the president and education secretary’s decision to kill off the program flies in the face of the political values they pretend to stand for. In fact, the biggest names in D.C.’s school-choice battle are local politicians such as Chavous and parents such as Virginia Walden-Ford. Walden-Ford, who had a son in the program, is now executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice.
Now how does a president who started out as a community organizer in Chicago’s housing projects justify denying educational opportunities to students in D.C.’s housing projects? “The community organizer Barack Obama would have walked with these people,” observed Chavous. “The community organizer Barack Obama would have been standing with us. That’s what I told Duncan to go back and tell the president.”
Chavous wasn’t speaking at the Heritage Foundation just to throw stones at the White House. The school-choice movement in D.C. has set about winning hearts and minds. Chavous was there to introduce a 30-minute film produced in conjunction with Heritage that gives an overview of the issue. The film features NPR and Fox News correspondent Juan Williams and is expertly produced and deeply affecting — no mean feat considering that many aspects of school choice are highly technical.
Here is the film (article continues after jump):
The facts and events presented make an almost inarguable case for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program: The $7,500 vouchers cost about half of what it does to educate a student in D.C.’s dismal public schools; 36 percent of adults in D.C. are functionally illiterate; D.C. has the highest rate of child poverty in the country; the vast majority of D.C. residents are in favor of the program; a study earlier this year showed the program to be a success, but the Department of Education tried to squelch it. A prominent National Education Association teachers’-union leader explains why the powerful Democratic constituency protects the status quo in education: “It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.”
The film comes just a few weeks after another public-relations coup for the school-choice movement. On September 30, a rally at the Capitol attracted thousands — almost all of them students and parents from the district. Prominent speakers in favor of school choice included Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, former education secretary Margaret Spellings, and even Bruce Stewart. Stewart isn’t exactly a household name, but until last year the mild-mannered Quaker educator was the head of school at Sidwell Friends, the elite private school the president’s two children attend. At the rally, Stewart compared the fight for school choice to the school-integration fights he witnessed firsthand in North Carolina as a young teacher. When I asked Stewart at the rally if he thought that the Democrats needed to do more to stand up to the teachers’ unions, he responded: “I don’t know if I’ve if I’ve ever felt anything deeper in my life — yes.”
In May, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held hearings on D.C. school-choice program, the committee invited six interested parties to defend ending the program. Not one accepted the invitation.
The D.C. school-choice movement aims to keep the pressure on. There’s considerable evidence to suggest the public is on their side, so the more they can force those who supported terminating the program to publicly defend their actions, the sooner the program will be reinstated. President Obama, his education secretary, and the Democratic leadership are going to have to explain to Kevin Chavous why they have dashed the hopes of America’s most vulnerable students. Their response should be, well, educational.
The video includes the most outrageous comment by a Teachers' Union president -- it is staggering and deserves the kind of promotion that Glenn Beck is becoming famous for.
Any Republican with stones could figure out exactly how to ram this down some Democratic throats...
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1274179818?bctid=45761357001
Here’s the link for this video — after you’ve seen this, you’ll have new respect for Juan Williams and rising contempt for the Teachers’ Unions who oppose these opportunity scholarships in DC.
Pinging this article and especially the video linked to my reply. Please give it the 28 minutes that it deserves. Thanks in advance.
And then Kevin Chavous and 97% of the black voters in DC will still vote 0bama and the Democrat party.
I can explain this pretty easily. The motto of the NEA has been, "Aim for mediocrity, it's only fair," for a long time, but now it's even worse. The goal of the small schools that are the pet project of Arne Duncan, back home in Chicago, is to emphasize school retention and community awareness (victimhood). They claim that community organization is more important than test scores (no more state testing requirements). Here, in Seattle, they don't even care if the kids pass. They drop all the failing grades from their averages, including for sports eligibility.
They have been doing this at Ivy league schools for years, but I hadn't heard of it in high schools. Law schools around the country have started this practice and I don't know about other grad schools. So, you can see, aiming for excellence is no longer an option. They simply want to level the playing field, give the gang bangers a chance for the job as your banker, real estate broker, or radiology tech in the hospital.
Several years ago, Chavous wanted all 2 1/2-3 year olds in the District to be forced to attend childcare, either privately or in programs set up by the public schools. I wrote him and asked why he would want DC children to be subjected to the failed DC schools at such a young age. I’m surprised he’s even for choice.
I am sick of bigoted, skin deep, "home team" support at the expense of all our lives.
Just got back from the VA; Guess who’s gonna be there tomorrow... FLOTUS. I will ask her in person if I get a chance.
They're trying to kill it because it's successful. I thought that was obvious.
It’s not just because it’s a success that they are trying to kill it. It’s because they don’t want the students to strive for success. Do you understand the difference?
They want to make high school a meaningless experience, they want to even the playing field, dumb down the schools for all students, except for the children of the elite.
Obama’s children have never attended public school and neither did he.
I suggest that you read up on Duncan’s small school project. It was based on Ayer’s educational philosophy. There was a good article in the WSJ about it. I think that you can find it by doing a google search on Chicago small schools/ WSJ.
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