The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in May of 1954, in my opinion, should be celebrated as a high point in American history. Deciding that state-sponsored segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Justices ended legalized segregation in the nation’s public schools, which was a positive step toward acknowledging that black schoolchildren weren’t second-class citizens.
What should be lamented, however, is the current state of the nation’s public school system. De facto segregation has returned on the basis of class, which unfortunately, continues to disproportionately affect poor minorities, particularly black children. Today, the teachers’ unions and their fellow Educrats in political office have demonstrated its steadfast unwillingness to allow poor and minority children access to quality education of their parents’ choosing facilitated by school vouchers.
For example, President Barack Obama has continually sought to defund and end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides federal grant-based vouchers, or scholarships, to the parents of low-income black and minority children, which can be used to cover tuition costs and other expenses at private schools. For several years running, President Obama’s budget intentionally cut all funding for the program, even though that funding- per student- was less than what the Washington DC school system spends per student, but with far greater results.
In other words, it’s okay for he and his wife Michelle to choose what school their daughters attend- in their case, Sidwell Friends- that costs $37k per child, but it’s not okay for poor parents, particularly minorities, to choose the school(s) that their children attend.
Further, Obama- through Attorney General Eric Holder- sued Louisiana, attempting to end the state’s successful Louisiana Scholarship Program. Holder argued spuriously that engaging in school choice re-segregates public schools, violating the federal government’s court-ordered segregation plans. For Holder, school choice equals racial segregation. This argument is specious to say the least, primarily because empowering parents to choose which schools their children attend- or not attend- has nothing to do with racial segregation; it has everything to do with parents segregating themselves and their children from poor teachers and abysmally sub-standard education.
Then there’s New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio. Since being elected mayor, he’s zealously attempted to stop the expansion of the city’s successful charter school program that serves the city’s minority population. Here again is an example of an elected official preventing poor children access to better education, while his son attends Brooklyn Tech, an elite public high school. When de Blasio made his disgraceful and morally indefensible intentions known, concerned minority parents were begging to keep the schools open because the parents realized the incredible opportunity that was being taken away from their children all for ideological reasons.
Last year, Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union, negotiated a new teachers’ contract with Chicago (costing the city an additional $74 million per year) knowing full well the Chicago Board of Education was intent on closing close to fifty schools (because of dying enrollment and near billion-dollar city deficit). This literally puts children’s lives at risk because many now have to cross gang-infested neighborhoods to attend new schools. That money didn’t go to schoolchildren; it went to the teachers. And Lewis is all for school choice if that choice is limited to the status quo schools, which are poorly managed by the politicized teachers’ unions.
Teachers win; poor schoolchildren lose. It’s wrong and it’s immoral, particularly when blacks and other minorities are heavily in favor of school vouchers that facilitate school choice.
When teachers’ unions- in combination with the politicians whose campaigns they fund- obstruct school choice, they’re perfectly emblematic of segregationist and former Alabama governor George Wallace defiantly standing in the schoolhouse door- upholding his promise of “segregation today, tomorrow and forever.”
Today’s segregation isn’t racial; it’s socio-economic. The so-called “haves” can and do choose the schools their children attend, giving them all of the foundational benefits which maximizes their academic potential for a brighter future. But these “haves” actively deny to poor parents and their children the same life-giving opportunities that inevitably limits the future potential and success for poor children.
It’s particularly shameful when these so-called “haves, ” these hypocrites, are politicians who tout the benefits of public education while not thinking twice about sending their children to elite publics schools or expensive private schools.
A despicable charade of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
It is of no coincidence that Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Bill de Blasio, Karen Lewis, George Wallace, the teachers’ unions, and the majority of people who are against school choice are tied to- or members of– the Democrat party or outright socialists.
Which is the same thing as being a Democrat.