School choice obstructionists throwing away the dream

On the heels of the excellent John Stossel 20/20 report comes an great editorial in the WSJ by John Fund. From yesterday's MLK Day, Fund shows how those against school choice are killing the dream that MLK spoke of. The piece centers around Milwaukee where in an urban area, school choice was squeaked in by former governor Tommy Thompson albeit on a limited basis. In order to get it through, Thompson agreed to a cap of 15% of public school enrollment can use their voucher to attend a private school.

In spite of continuing improvement of test scores, expansion of the program has been fought tooth and nail by the teacher's union. In fact, such pressure has resulted in the "cap" being interpreted in a more constricting way than originally set forth. Due to the cap being applied not only to strudents but also by school, new schools cannot open without forcing a reduction in another school or schools. So in the face of progress, this great program is being killed instead of expanded on.

The fact is that urban blacks and hispanics are paying the highest price for the sake of the teacher's union and liberalism in general. While Wisconsin and specifically Milwaukee is a bastion of liberalism, they show no sign of wanting to actually help those they always decry conservatives of oppressing. With proven progress whenever it is tried, it is the liberals who want to keep the poor black kids "on the plantation" instead of living "the dream".

There is no excuse for this to go on and there is no excuse that the liberal media has not brought a spotlight and pressure to bear to emancipate these kids from the chains of the unions. School choice needs to be the law of the land. The media and the unions should be ashamed for their culpability in this injustice.