Extolling the virtues of parental involvement, expanded opportunity and enhanced academic achievement, the nation’s largest newspaper solidly endorsed parental choice today and blasted President Barack Obama for denying it to Washington D.C. kids.
“It was curious that when President Obama recently allowed 1,716 of Washington’s neediest schoolchildren to keep, until graduation, the vouchers they use to escape their failed public schools for higher-quality private ones, he also closed the program to new applicants,” the paper writes. “All this occurred as the Education Department reported that voucher participants show superior skills in reading, safety and orderliness. The news was buried in an impenetrable study released without a news conference.”
A stinging rebuke of the educrat status quo across the country, USA Today specifically blasted teachers unions for opposing “options that invite competition for public schools.”
From the editorial:
Vouchers have improved the math and reading of inner-city children from Dayton, Ohio, to Charlotte, N.C., various studies show. The Washington vouchers improved the reading of girls and younger kids by about half a school year, though results for other groups were iffier. Yet opposition is so fierce that few voucher experiments survive past the seedling stage.
Florida vouchers were blocked by a party-line vote in the state Supreme Court. In Utah, they were killed by a union-funded anti-voucher campaign.
This serves only to protect failing schools.
By federal measures, students at 12,978 U.S. schools are failing to improve adequately — 13% of the total. Giving them another option, by vouchers or by other means, provides an escape route and pressures public schools to improve.
Good for USA Today. We occasionally see mainstream media outlets break from their status quo allegiances and endorse what’s actually in the best interests of the American people, but rarely do they do it with this sort of bare-knuckled bluntness.
Underscoring what really matters, the editorial concludes by reminding us that “20 million low-income school kids need a chance to succeed,” and that “school choice is the most effective way to give it to them.”
Amen to that.
By Mike May 19, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Can’t wait to hear the anti-choice zealots try their tired old game out on the not-so-conservative USA Today- maybe they’ll claim that Howard Rich bought the paper (or DC’s Education Dept) yesterday…
By BIN News Editorial Staff May 19, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Poor Mike. Blinded by the voucher scam.
Vouchers are a scam because they would only leave those who need help the most even further behind. Voucher clowns don’t care.
Vouchers are a scam because they ignore the real problems facing public education. You know what those are.
The shameful minimally adequate standard our state endorses. The funding problems. The poverty. The racism.
And the eleventy brazillion social ills that go with them.
Voucher clowns don’t care.
Vouchers are a scam because they steal tax dollars. Tax dollars our State needs to help all children. Not just those who can afford private school.
Vouchers are not choice. Just a scam.
And the voucher scam is dead, again, in S.C.
BIN News Editorial Staff
Flair and Balanced
By Liberty fo me May 20, 2009 at 7:03 am
They cant be right about this ..because all the fascist say that public schools are better,they just need MORE MONEY….LOL LOL LOL LOL.
ABOLISH PUBLIC SCHOOL.. RON PAUL 2012
By Chris May 20, 2009 at 8:45 am
BIN –
I have seen countless anti-voucher (actually, anti-everything) posts by you here. Ya, ya, ya, I know that you and FITS are mortal enemies – whatever. Serious questions for you: Did you attend public schools in South Carolina? If so, which district? How many districts have you been to and seen, first hand, the overwhelming need for immediate change for the sake of education…not to mention safety…of our children? How much firsthand experience and knowledge do you have of the education system – both at the state level and the district level? Do you even know where the majority of school funding comes from?
OK…I get it – you firmly believe that vouchers are the work of Satan to distract us all from the path of good and righteousness. Fine. Let’s say I agree with you. Please enlighten us lesser beings with your alternative – one that will no doubt make an actual (not just political) difference.
I wait with bated breath.