Saving DC’s Vouchers

Today DC’s school vouchers come up for discussion in the House, and the outlook isn’t good. Despite the fact that these vouchers have saved many of the city’s underprivileged children from attending some of the worst public schools in the nation, Democrats do not seem inclined to continue them. Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal asks whether Barack Obama will stand up for change these kids could believe in, and David Keene in The Hill gives a detailed critique of the plan to drop the vouchers. Here’s a sample of Keene’s article:

The rise of the charter and voucher movements, along with the skyrocketing number of parents choosing to home-school their children rather than entrust them to a system that doesn’t work, represent a rational response to the problem. Union representatives and elected officials like Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) claim that rather than giving up on traditional public schools, these parents should stick with them and help fix them.

What she is really asking, of course, is for parents to accept the fact of an ugly and unacceptable status quo. The District’s schools have been a disaster for decades and have helped keep the children of District residents from achieving their dreams or the success every parent wishes for his or her children. What Ms. Norton and her cohorts are telling those who have found a better way is that the greater good dictates that they sacrifice the hopes and dreams of their children to the ideological and political demands of those who have failed and continue to fail.

That’s the ugly truth in Washington and elsewhere. Charter schools and private schools are under attack around the country today, not because they don’t work, but because they do. The fact that the victims of these attacks are often those poor and minority kids who most need a good education seems of little concern to folks like Ms. Norton.

Charter schools and vouchers were originally seen by many as a means not only of providing a way out for children trapped in failing schools that weren’t being fixed, but as a way to inject competitive pressure into a monopolistic structure and thus force the traditional public school systems to change and improve. Unfortunately, however, the existing system is responding to competition like most monopolies — by trying to close down its competitors rather than improve what it has to offer.