Category Archives: Federal Government

Yesterday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to town. The good news is he visited two of Denver’s autonomy schools: Bruce Randolph and Montclair. The Education Secretary certainly is saying the right things about how this approach can grow: “The business we should be in is scaling up what works as quickly as possible,” Duncan said. “Let’s take those lessons, let’s replicate them and move on absolutely as fast as we can with a sense of urgency. We have to get dramatically better as a country, and we need to do it as fast as we can.” The $5 billion pot of “Race to the Top” innovation money is supposed to fulfill this purpose. As pointed out by Swifty Charlie and Flypaper’s Mike Petrilli, the reality is that “Race to the Top” is the only part of the federal stimulus funds that has even a legitimate shot at advancing school reform. Colorado may make some modest strides with the innovation dollars, but it very well could be outweighed by the much greater opportunity and resources wasted.

I’ve written about it a lot: the attack by Congress against students in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, that is. But I’m not ready to give up yet. And you shouldn’t be, either. If you need some inspiration – or maybe you’re just learning about this attack on school choice that benefits low-income kids in our nation’s capital – you really ought to listen to Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, explain the situation in this 10-minute iVoices podcast: Is it really true that the best we can hope for is saving the scholarships of the 1,700 kids who currently receive them, and leaving out in the cold the thousands more on waiting lists to escape some terrible D.C. public schools? Maybe that is the best we can hope for on behalf of Washington D.C. students for now, but don’t give up. After all, it’s important to note – as Adam Schaeffer does on the Cato-at-Liberty blog – that voucher and tax credit programs across the country are growing and growing in bipartisan political support. Keep your chin up. Stay in the fight.

The fight isn’t over yet, but things aren’t looking good for the 1,700 poor Washington D.C. kids who benefit from the federally-funded voucher program – kids like those featured in this compelling Heritage Foundation video (H/T Flypaper): Are you listening, Congress? Are you paying attention, President Obama?

So I just started cooling down a bit from yesterday (I assure you, no Legos were thrown … at least not directly at anybody). Then I watched this Fox News clip about the U.S. Senate trying to take away vouchers from people like Mercedes Campbell (H/T Edspresso): That Glenn Beck guy? I can tell he feels like I do. Jeanne Allen explains what’s at stake so eloquently. And then I’m just left feeling bad for Mercedes and the 1,700 other kids in Washington, D.C., whose scholarships are at stake. Are you outraged yet, too? After taking a couple deep breaths, I had to go around and look for some good news, and found this: “Appeals Court Rules School Choice Program is Constitutional”. At least the 1,947 kids benefiting from Arizona’s corporate tax credit program have won a victory. And I don’t have to consider throwing Legos at any judges. That could probably get me in trouble, anyway.

Way to go, U.S. Senate. You made a 5-year-old boy cry. How dare you vote to take away scholarships from D.C. kids who really need them! Have you seen these kids? Even the Eduwonk – no big fan of vouchers – says “the spectacle of forcing the kids to leave their schools before they age out is pretty cold-hearted.” Uh-huh. Fifty-eight U.S. Senators – including Colorado’s own Michael Bennet and Mark Udall – have decided to spend billions on wasteful pork projects, but can’t spare anything to keep 1,700 students from exercising the choice to enroll in a better school. And to think I’ve said nice things about Mr. Bennet before. I’m thinking about taking it back. Andy Smarick at the Flypaper blog asks: “Why are they doing this?” He makes some very good points, and I have to agree with him. But really, I’m just plain mad right now. I’ve even thought about throwing some of my Legos at the next U.S. Senator who comes my way. (Not that many ever have, mind you.) Will President Obama show the Senators who’s in charge? His press secretary said today that “it wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those […]

President Obama made some remarks about education yesterday, and my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow got a chance to respond in this piece from Face The State: Ben DeGrow, education policy analyst for the Independence Institute, said he is glad to finally see Obama taking a strong position on education. “Obama the candidate and Obama the President has been all over the place on education reform, and it’s been hard to pin him down,” said DeGrow. “The comments in [Tuesday’s] speech are mostly promising, and we need to hold him to those comments.” [link added] In the Face the State piece, State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer also raised the point that Obama has given no indication of wanting to help stop an effort by Democrats in Congress to take away private tuition scholarships from poor kids in the nation’s capital. Still, the President’s message yesterday was largely on the right track. Among the less traditionally Democratic education reform ideas Barack Obama embraced are charter schools, accountability, and teacher performance pay. In the latter case, Obama seems to grasp the importance of the current problem with teacher quality: In his speech, the president issued a call for a […]

The political saga of undoing educational choice and opportunity in Washington D.C. continues. It got more interesting yesterday when the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a reporter that he was taking a different position on the voucher program in the nation’s capital than Congressional Democrats who are currently threatening to pull the plug on it: Duncan opposes vouchers, he said in an interview with The Associated Press. But he said Washington is a special case, and kids already in private schools on the public dime should be allowed to continue. “I don’t think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they’re happy and safe and satisfied and learning,” Duncan told said. “I think those kids need to stay in their school.” Initial reactions have run the gamut.

Last week I introduced you to some kids from Washington D.C. who would be hurt by Congress’ attempt to take away their school choice program. These kids asked President Obama to step in and save their D.C. Opportunity Scholarships. Yesterday, a writer for the Wall Street Journal introduced us to two more kids who could lose their scholarships, kids that go to school with the President’s daughters: Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position. The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma. You can follow the link above to see a picture of Sarah and James. I am so glad to see Joe Williams from Democrats for Education Reform write truth to power on […]

You know how this almost-six-year-old is no fan of the huge spending bill the President flew out here to sign last week. While it sounds nice on paper, I’m here to clue you in to the fact we aren’t going to be saved by a “magical money tree”. In the meantime, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has a tip on how to make the best out of a bad situation. As he writes in yesterday’s edition of the Colorado Daily – if nearly a billion dollars is going to flow into Colorado for the purposes of K-12 education, let’s at least attach it to some serious and radical reforms: If the federal government is bound to spend untold billions it doesn’t have on education, nearly all would be better served by a student-centered approach to distributing the funds. Washington would do much better to offer incentives to states and school districts that attach funds directly to students, empowering families with a wide array of public schooling options. After all, parents best know how to make use of the money to meet their children’s needs. The so-called “stimulus” is a fait accompli. Yet for all the mammoth debt, the […]

I have to go back to school today, so I’ll miss the big rally at the State Capitol today: President Obama is flying his corporate jet to Denver to sign a bill putting my children into debt. I want to give him a proper Mile High welcome. The Independence Institute, along with Americans for Prosperity and other groups promoting sanity, are organizing a protest tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon at the west steps of the state capitol, and I hope you’ll be there. We’ll have over-sized checks you can sign to show your family’s $30,000 commitment to the bill. I’ll be joined by Michelle Malkin, Mike Coffman, Bob Beauprez, Jim Pfaff from AFP and many others. My parents said they want to make a statement and sign one of those checks. Thirty thousand bucks is a lot of money, you know. Can you imagine how many Legos or Matchbox cars that would buy? Seriously. And my family doesn’t get to pick the $30,000 off the magical money tree any more than the federal government gets to do so with the hundreds of billions of dollars they’re borrowing and spending. And, sorry to say, there won’t be a magical money tree at […]