Obama Flip Flops On DC Voucher Program

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RockX

Banned
Obama Offers D.C. Voucher Program Extension for Existing Students

By Shailagh Murray

President Obama will seek to extend the controversial D.C. school voucher program until all 1,716 participants have graduated from high school, although no new students will be accepted, according to an administration official who has reviewed budget details scheduled for release tomorrow.

The budget documents, which expand on the fiscal 2010 blueprint that Congress approved last month by outlining Obama's priorities in detail, would provide $12.2 million for the Opportunity Scholarship Program for the 2009-2010 school year. The new language also would revise current law that makes further funding for existing students contingent on Congress's reauthorization of the program beyond its current June 2010 expiration date. Under the Obama proposal, further congressional action would not be necessary, and current students would automatically receive grants until they finish school.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had told reporters that it didn't make sense "to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning," but Democrats effectively terminated the program by requiring its reauthorization. Obama must now convince Democratic lawmakers to endorse a gradual phase out by continuing to include grant funding in future appropriation bills.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/05/06/obama_proposes_extending_dc_vo.html?wprss=44


LOL

Gotta keep the black voters happy. Can't have any of them rioting and marching down the street, with Sharpton or Jackson.
 
I'll give him partial credit for keeping it place for the existing students. He's doing the right thing there. It's still sad he's taking away the future opportunity for the other kids of the area.
 
cawacko said:
I'll give him partial credit for keeping it place for the existing students. He's doing the right thing there. It's still sad he's taking away the future opportunity for the other kids of the area.
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cant have all those poor kids going to school with the first children.
 
webbway said:
....
Gotta keep the black voters happy. Can't have any of them rioting and marching down the street, with Sharpton or Jackson.[/B]
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They won't say a peep about keeping all those inner city black kids down. After all, they've been doing it themselves for decades now. They want to keep them all stupid.
 
SmarterThanYou said:
must reinstate indoctrination center attendance
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Further along in the article is this paragraph: The Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math. But the White House concluded that moving the children back to public schools amounted to an unnecessary disruption.

How long are we going to throw money at a program that isn't giving good results?
 
christiefan915 said:
Further along in the article is this paragraph: The Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math. But the White House concluded that moving the children back to public schools amounted to an unnecessary disruption.

How long are we going to throw money at a program that isn't giving good results?
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Well please pardon our hesitation at taking the DOE at face value in its analysis with its obvious vested interested in not seeing a program such as this succeed. That being said for the sake of argument assuming it's accurate if there is improvement for these children why would you want to see them go back to the failing D.C. public school system?
 
christiefan915 said:
Further along in the article is this paragraph: The Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math. But the White House concluded that moving the children back to public schools amounted to an unnecessary disruption.

How long are we going to throw money at a program that isn't giving good results?
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if they were doing lousy in public school and then later doing lousy in voucher school, mayhaps its not the schools?
 
cawacko said:
Well please pardon our hesitation at taking the DOE at face value in its analysis with its obvious vested interested in not seeing a program such as this succeed. That being said for the sake of argument assuming it's accurate if there is improvement for these children why would you want to see them go back to the failing D.C. public school system?
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If there is/was improvement, I wouldn't want them to. The program was put in place in 2003. None of the failures of the program took place during the Obama administration.

Why on earth do you think there's a vested interest in seeing it fail? Just because the report came out during Obama's, not bu$h's administration?
 
christiefan915 said:
Further along in the article is this paragraph: The Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math. But the White House concluded that moving the children back to public schools amounted to an unnecessary disruption.

How long are we going to throw money at a program that isn't giving good results?
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Isn't the DOE beholden to the public schools? Wouldn't this make them a little biased against the voucher program? The wording of this summation looks like the glass is half empty, but another interpretation is that the glass is half full. It could just as easily say "slight gains in math and more significant gains in reading".
 
christiefan915 said:
If there is/was improvement, I wouldn't want them to. The program was put in place in 2003. None of the failures of the program took place during the Obama administration.

Why on earth do you think there's a vested interest in seeing it fail? Just because the report came out during Obama's, not bu$h's administration?
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There weren't failures in the program. There were improvements and my blame on Obama is for eliminating it. If this were released during the Bush Administration they would have supported renewing it.

The vested interest for failure is the DOE is a supporter of the public education status quo monopoly. It's goal aren't the betterment of the kids its maintaining its power. Thus initiatives such as charter schools or school choice programs which challenge the status quo are viewed as a threat.
 
cawacko said:
There weren't failures in the program. There were improvements and my blame on Obama is for eliminating it. If this were released during the Bush Administration they would have supported renewing it.

The vested interest for failure is the DOE is a supporter of the public education status quo monopoly. It's goal aren't the betterment of the kids its maintaining its power. Thus initiatives such as charter schools or school choice programs which challenge the status quo are viewed as a threat.
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If there's another report to compare and contrast with the DOE report, I'd be happy to look at it. The article doesn't give any other info so my response is based on what I read.

The voucher program had supporters and detractors from the start.

Though the program has considerable local support, especially from D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, it also faces strong opposition both locally and nationally.

One frequent argument against federal funding for vouchers is that is violates church-state separation. In D.C., 22 of the participating schools—including some of the largest—are Catholic, and another 14 are based in other faiths.

Because private schools cannot be required to admit any student, the argument is also made that vouchers use federal tax dollars to subsidize discrimination—whether against learning disabled and handicapped students, or children who just don't fit the school's profile.

Of the 62 participating schools listed in the OSP directory, 44 indicate they cannot accept children with physical disabilities, and 23 say they cannot accept children with learning disabilities.

Such discrimination is unacceptable.

From my reading of other threads on the forum, conservatives have voiced a lot of opposition to government entitlement programs. Why is this one any different from the rest?

I personally think poor people, especially children, should get some government help whether this involves education, health care, food stamps, whatever. It just seems that this particular entitlement has become an issue only because Obama may be trying to end it.
 
christiefan915 said:
If there's another report to compare and contrast with the DOE report, I'd be happy to look at it. The article doesn't give any other info so my response is based on what I read.

The voucher program had supporters and detractors from the start.

Though the program has considerable local support, especially from D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, it also faces strong opposition both locally and nationally.

One frequent argument against federal funding for vouchers is that is violates church-state separation. In D.C., 22 of the participating schools—including some of the largest—are Catholic, and another 14 are based in other faiths.

Because private schools cannot be required to admit any student, the argument is also made that vouchers use federal tax dollars to subsidize discrimination—whether against learning disabled and handicapped students, or children who just don't fit the school's profile.

Of the 62 participating schools listed in the OSP directory, 44 indicate they cannot accept children with physical disabilities, and 23 say they cannot accept children with learning disabilities.

Such discrimination is unacceptable.

From my reading of other threads on the forum, conservatives have voiced a lot of opposition to government entitlement programs. Why is this one any different from the rest?

I personally think poor people, especially children, should get some government help whether this involves education, health care, food stamps, whatever. It just seems that this particular entitlement has become an issue only because Obama may be trying to end it.
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Outside of Obama ending this program leave him out of it if that helps understand the issue better (the issue is about kids not partisanship). Here's my most basic defense of school choice. If you are a family with money and you are in an area with poor public schools you have two other options. You can send your kid to private school or you can move to another area with a better public school district. If you are a poor family and cannot afford to move you have no other option than the failing local public school. The point of school choice is to give families/kids options when they have none. School choice options also include other public schools so this 'seperation of church and state' b.s. used to keep inner-city kids in failing schools is crap.

If you want to make this all some partisan thing we can go down that road too. But the issue of school choice is about kids, not b.s. Washington politics.
 
christiefan915 said:
Further along in the article is this paragraph: The Department of Education recently issued a three-year analysis of student achievement under the program that showed limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math. But the White House concluded that moving the children back to public schools amounted to an unnecessary disruption.

How long are we going to throw money at a program that isn't giving good results?
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1) Notice.... the highly BIASED report by the DOE pawns of the teachers union... states that their were 'limited gains' in reading, no 'significant' progress in math. Even that heavily biased report doesn't say the voucher system 'failed'....

2) It is not throwing money at a bad program... it is providing the same money the idiots in DC would have given to the public school system and allocated it to the schools the parents choose for their kids. The ones the PARENTS feel is in the best interest of their kids.

3) Where do you think the elite families in DC send their kids? To these 'failed' schools? Or do they choose to send them to the BEST schools available?

4) Go find the heavily biased report from the DOE... you will find that it also notes that for college prep... the private schools better prepare their students.

5) The only failure is the DC public school system.

6) If you want to see how well the voucher system can work... let a group of kids go through the entire K-12 spectrum with a CHOICE. This particular program began in 2003... which means at MOST the kids have only had 6 years in private schools. Which further means that they had to overcome the handicap of having been forced to endure at LEAST 6 years of public school.

7) If the program is such a failure... WHY do they have to have a lottery system to see who GETS to take part in it?

8) The democrats are completely beholden to the monopolistic teachers union. They could care less what is in the best interest of the kids. They simply want to suck up to a voting block.
 
Dungheap said:
The DOE report was issued by the Bush Administration.
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To me that means nothing. My bet is the report was done by DOE lifers who have a vested interest in the outcome of the survey. And while Bush himself may have given a modicum of rhetoric to school choice he actually did very little of it. School choice is not something all Republicans support nor all Demcrats don't support. So its not accurate imo to assume because it came from the Bush Administation that its automatically pro-school choice.
 
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