THERE'S JUST ONE "R" THAT MATTERS...'RITHMETIC:

Killing Opportunity (Nat Hentoff, 3/30/09, Washington Times)

President Obama's huge stimulus bill includes about $100 billion for education. And he insists his criteria for supporting reforms is not "whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works."

Applauding, Randi Weingarten, powerful head of the American Federation of Teachers (1.4 million members), calls Mr. Obama the "education president." However, when congressional Democrats recently doomed the Opportunity Scholarship Program for poor children in the District, the education president didn't say a word.

Of the 1,700 students, starting in kindergarten, in this private-school voucher program, 90 percent are black and 9 percent are Hispanic. First the House and then the Senate inserted into the $410 billion omnibus spending bill language that will eliminate the $7,500 annual scholarships for these poor children after the next school year. It could only be reauthorized by the same Democratic-controlled Congress and the anti-voucher D.C. Council. Fat chance!

Just as the GOP opposes vouchers because their suburban white voters don't want minorities in their kids' classrooms, so do Democrats oppose them because their donors -- teachers unions and the like -- don't want them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 30, 2009 7:00 AM