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“As the second education secretary with school-aged kids, where does your daughter go to school, and how important was the school district in your decision about where to live?

A.D. [Arne Duncan] : She goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn’t want to try to save the country’s children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children’s education.”

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Redstorm said:
Hey, JC, long time no see. Hope all is well with you.

I was reading about this yesterday.  It's is a political power play, pure and simple. Regardless of what ones believes concerning school choice, what is being done to these children is a travesty.

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Then the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported that the Department of Education had buried a study that illustrated unquestionable and pervasive improvement among kids who won vouchers, compared to the kids who didn't. Not only was the report disregarded, the Department of Education issued a gag order on any discussion about it.

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I can't get over the fact that they issued a gag order and refused to even discuss it.  Here is a report showing progress of a government program.  It actually is working!  Nobody is allowed to talk about it, and we are going to defund it.  With all the billions that we are spending we are taking away one of the few programs that works.  Poor black children be damned.  Don't get in the way of the teacher's unions.



Like Governor Wallace in the days of the old South, the Democratic party is still working quite effectively to restrict school choice from poor black folk.

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It’s a strange time.  Outside the usual suspects there is not a lot of excitement to save the program even as you’re really hard pressed to find anyone who thinks it’s doing any harm — except politically because it carries the message…  In other words, this episode would seem to have all the makings (race, power, politics) of a powerful moment, except it’s basically a non-moment so far…there isn’t even much of an underdog effect…

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Now the parents of these families are really left with no choice whatsoever. For the most part, it%u2019s back to DCPS. The Quick and the Ed recently had the privilege of drawing names at a lottery drawing for a DC public charter. I have cherry-picked the heart-breaking part of the post:

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When I drew the last name for an official Pre-K berth, a woman in the crowd drew a sharp breath. I had drawn her son's best friend. She sat quietly as I started to draw the waiting list. When I hit #20, tears began to run down her face. Sometime after #50, she left the room.

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The irony is that the Democrats strongly dislike such programs when they are directly benefiting low-income and minority families (i.e. their constituents). This is not important though when one of your chief sources of funding is the teacher's unions.

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JesusChrist said:
Outside the usual suspects there is not a lot of excitement to save the program even as you're really hard pressed to find anyone who thinks it's doing any harm?

You wonder where the liberals are that constantly proport to care for all the poor black children.

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JesusChrist said:
Why don't you tell that to the poor black families in DC that are going to lose their vouchers.

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JesusChrist said:
Like Governor Wallace in the days of the old South, the Democratic party is still working quite effectively to restrict school choice from poor black folk.

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TGRR said:

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JesusChrist said:
Like Governor Wallace in the days of the old South, the Democratic party is still working quite effectively to restrict school choice from poor black folk.

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You white folks are a hoot.  We won't be taking advice from the party of Reagan, thanks.

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Seuss said:
Even better... tax payers shouldn't have to foot the bill for anybody to attend school.

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Eva Moskowitz, former chair of the New York City Council education committee and now a charter school operator, has characterized this new push against charters as a "backlash" led by "a union-political-educational complex that is trying to halt progress and put the interests of adults above the interests of children." She is right. If the union-political-education complex succeeds in depriving charter schools of funding and burdening them with regulations, children really will be harmed.

The highest quality studies have consistently shown that students learn more in charter schools. In New York City, Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby found that students accepted by lottery to charter schools were significantly outpacing the academic progress of their peers who lost the lottery and were forced to return to district schools.

Florida State economist Tim Sass and colleagues found that middle-school students at charters in Florida and Chicago who continued into charter high schools were significantly more likely to graduate and go on to college than their peers who returned to district high schools because charter high schools were not available.

The most telling study is by Harvard economist Tom Kane about charter schools in Boston. It found that students accepted by lottery at independently operated charter schools significantly outperformed students who lost the lottery and returned to district schools. But students accepted by lottery at charters run by the school district with unionized teachers experienced no benefit

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Better for Poor People, Too

You might say, “That’s okay, Williams, if you have enough dollar votes. But what about poor people?” Poor people are far better served in the market arena than the political arena. Check this out. If you visit a poor neighborhood, you will see some nice clothing, some nice cars, some nice food, and maybe even some nice homes—no nice schools. Why not at least some nice schools? The explanation is simple. Clothing, cars, food, and houses are allocated through the market mechanism. Schools are allocated through the political mechanism. By the way, if you are a member of a minority, it is in your interest to minimize those decisions over your life made in the political arena, where the majority rules

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There is another unappreciated feature of the market arena. It reduces the potential for human conflict. Different Americans have different and intense preferences for cars, food, clothing, and entertainment. When is the last time you heard about Chrysler lovers fighting with Lexus lovers? It seldom if ever happens. Why? Those who love Chryslers get what they want, and those who love Lexuses get what they want, and each can live in peace with one another.

It is a different story in government-provided education. Some parents wish for their children to recite a morning prayer in schools. Other parents are repulsed by the idea. The fact that education is produced by government means there is either going to be prayer in school or no prayer in school. Parents must enter into conflict with one another. Why? If, for example, the parent who wishes for prayers in school loses the political battle, that parent will not have his wishes met. Of course he can send his child to a non-government school that has morning prayers, but through the tax code he is forced to continue paying for school services for which he has no use.

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Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated seating on streetcars and buses in the South did not go back for centuries.

Far from existing from time immemorial, as many have assumed, racially segregated seating in public transportation began in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Those who see government as the solution to social problems may be surprised to learn that it was government which created this problem.

Many, if not most, municipal transit systems were privately owned in the 19th century and the private owners of these systems had no incentive to segregate the races.

These owners may have been racists themselves but they were in business to make a profit -- and you don't make a profit by alienating a lot of your customers. There was not enough market demand for Jim Crow seating on municipal transit to bring it about.

It was politics that segregated the races because the incentives of the political process are different from the incentives of the economic process. Both blacks and whites spent money to ride the buses but, after the disenfranchisement of black voters in the late 19th and early 20th century, only whites counted in the political process.

It was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of the white voters to demand racial segregation. If some did and the others didn't care, that was sufficient politically, because what blacks wanted did not count politically after they lost the vote.

The incentives of the economic system and the incentives of the political system were not only different, they clashed. Private owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South lobbied against the Jim Crow laws while these laws were being written, challenged them in the courts after the laws were passed, and then dragged their feet in enforcing those laws after they were upheld by the courts.

These tactics delayed the enforcement of Jim Crow seating laws for years in some places. Then company employees began to be arrested for not enforcing such laws and at least one president of a streetcar company was threatened with jail if he didn't comply.

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Seuss said:
> The tax payers shouldn't have to foot the bill so others can attend the same school.

Even better... tax payers shouldn't have to foot the bill for anybody to attend school.

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badchad said:

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Seuss said:
Even better... tax payers shouldn't have to foot the bill for anybody to attend school.

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I'm still of the belief that large-scale, public education providing the masses with the most basic skills (e.g. reading, writing, arithmetic) is of great societal benefit.

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