The clever folks at the Heritage Foundation have done it again, coming up with a new version of a classic survey (H/T Core Knowledge Blog):

The new survey revealed that 38 percent of Members of the 111th Congress sent a child to private school at one time. (See Appendix Table A-1.) Of these respondents,

• 44 percent of Senators and 36 percent of Representatives had at one time sent their children to private school;
• 23 percent of House Education and Labor Committee Members and nearly 40 percent of Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Members have ever sent their children to private school;
• 38 percent of House Appropriations Committee Members and 35 percent of Senate Finance Committee Members have ever sent their children to private school; and
• 35 percent of Congressional Black Caucus Members and 31 percent of Congressional HispanicCaucus Members exercised private-school choice.[6](See Chart 1.)

It’s the perfect example of “School Choice for Me, But Not for Thee”.

The report is great, but I have a couple questions for the author Lindsey Burke — in search of more detail:

• Senator Dick Durbin is mentioned as a leading opponent of the D.C. voucher program who sends his own children to private school, but is there a full breakdown of Congress members’ personal school choice preferences compared to how they support the program?
• What about members of the Colorado delegation? How many of them have ever sent their kids to private school?

Great work from the Heritage Foundation exposing another layer of hypocrisy among some of our nation’s most powerful elected officials.