President Obama's Budget Deal Fuels Revival of School Vouchers

[Better Believe It]

Budget Deal Fuels Revival of School Vouchers
By TRIP GABRIEL
April 14, 2011

In the 11th-hour compromise to avoid a government shutdown last week, one concession that President Obama made to Republicans drew scant attention: he agreed to finance vouchers for Washington students to attend private schools.

The voucher program, whose main beneficiaries are church-affiliated schools, is close to the heart of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a product of parochial schools, who had repeatedly choked up defending it on the House floor last month.

The White House at first opposed the Opportunity Scholarship Program, saying it did not raise student achievement. But in the end it was an easy place to compromise, administration aides said, in order to save bigger, more prominent education initiatives favored by Democrats from the $38 billion in cuts.

Mr. Boehner’s beloved program is the latest example of how conservative Republicans across the country are advancing school vouchers — including offering them for the first time to middle-class families — and reviving a cause that until recently seemed moribund.

Read the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/us/politics/15voucher.html


Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, left, and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio want to expand school voucher programs in their states.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Oh, good...

NOT!

[apnu]

2. Jesus. Fucking. Christ! Does the GOP have any new ideas?

Its like I'm reliving the 1980s again. WTF?

[frazzled]

3. Limited to D.C. schools only

It's a precedent that will go nowhere. This is an old debate, and this concession is not going to revive it. Poor D.C.: it bore the brunt of everything here.

[Motown_Johnny]

4. If Medicare is to good for a voucher program shouldn't education also be?

I was hoping we had gained some ammunition in this one.

[PurityOfEssence]

5. Score another one for Religion, Incorporated

Yes, the enablers will remind us that during the primaries, Obama, although cautious as ever to get pinned down on the subject, was open to vouchers in certain situations. People downplayed this and used the tiresome old chess-playing analogies at the time.

Besides, having the concept of God ratified by and funded by our government can lead to anything bad, can it? So what if education funding goes to hell? Poor kids can always educate themselves on the internet. Oh...some don't have access to it... Well, they can always go to the libraries that are getting defunded.

Don't worry, this is the land of Whoppertunity!