No school choice for DC's poor children

from the Family Research Council
Forbidding the Poor from Choosing Good Schools
Congressional Democrats, in a foretaste of their likely education agenda for 2009, have signaled to poor families in the District of Columbia that their school choice vouchers aren't going to be renewed this fall. The news comes as a bitter blow to nearly 2,000 such families in the District, where Congress instituted a pilot school voucher program using federal funds in 2004.
District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who supports axing the program, says she met with families receiving the choice funds and "they look completely befuddled." It's no wonder why. The average yearly income for the families that participate in the program is just $22,736. Children enrolled in the program can use their vouchers, or scholarships, to attend a private school, a religious school, or one of the city's charter schools, as an alternative to the public system.
One affected mother, Patricia Williams, credited the program with changing her son Fransoir's life. At the District's Sacred Heart Catholic School, she said, Fransoir has "been developed in so many ways, intellectually, emotionally and in his values. I couldn't ask for anything better." Soon, thanks to Congressional Democrats and their singular devotion to just one form of education, Mrs. Williams and others in the District will lose their choice to ask.

Where is Barack Obama? Jesse Jackson? Al Sharpton?
These poor children are being denied a private education to escape DC's failing public school system. Or has the NEA and the UFT (United Federation of Teachers) bought their silence on this issue?
McCain should step into the gap and champion this cause, it's a true solution to poverty.