Notorious for being violent, under-performing laggards, D.C. public schools have among the highest dropout and lowest graduation rates in the country. In 2007, D.C.'s 4th and 8th grade students scored lower than children from all 50 states on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Fewer than half of children in D.C, public schools rated "proficient"!
So President G.W. Bush signed the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act, creating a program to provide scholarships to students from low-income families to attend a private school of their choice. This program targeted 2,000 children from low-income families in Washington D.C. In 2008 the program funded attendance at 54 D.C.-area private schools.
In one of his first acts as President in March of 2009, Barack Obama signed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill in to law. Buried in that bill was an appeasement to the teacher's unions that helped put him into the White House; an amendment that killed the District of Columbia's school voucher program, then known as the "D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program." Over 94% of the participating families in the D.C. voucher program were black families. The immensely successful program allowed parents of children in failing, inner-city schools to send their children elsewhere.
Not only did the amendment kill the program, but the language was included to prohibit any new students from receiving scholarships too. The president rescinded the scholarships set to go to 214 families in the 2010 school year. Of those 214 families, 214 were black households.
Via: American Thinker
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