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November 01, 2005
School Vouchers In New Orleans
Star Parker notes that GWB has a great opportunity to promote the cause of school vouchers, while at the same time gaining some good public relations points with black voters. Parker recalls that in his New Orleans address President Bush called for federal education assistance to be provided in the form of vouchers which would enable parents to choose the best school for their child.
This is a golden opportunity for the president to step up to the plate and show leadership. Clint Bolick of the Alliance for School Choice has pointed out that the president can get these education vouchers done by executive order.
The estimated price tag to provide a $7,500 voucher for each displaced kid is $2.8 billion. This is a drop in the bucket of the $62 billion that Congress has already appropriated for emergency relief. By a stroke of the pen, the president can eliminate restrictions in place and permit directing these FEMA funds for education. [...]
The majority of blacks poll in favor of school vouchers. This support gets stronger as the focus moves toward younger black voters. In a recent survey of black voters under the age of 35, done by David A. Bositis, and commissioned by the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, 66 percent indicated support for vouchers.
Over half of these young blacks surveyed defined themselves as moderate to conservative. However, their inclination is away from party affiliation and think of themselves as independent.
Parker wonders why the president doesn't act immediately; after all, he is known as a champion of the voucher concept. I wonder too--it seems like this is golden opportunity to head off the usual teachers' unions and stonewalling bureaucratics and jump-start a gigantic demonstration project. And if the polling is accurate on the support of blacks for vouchers (and it seems valid since it correlates with rising number of black parents who are home schooling their children), this is also a great chance to undo some of the injustice that's been inflicted on the black community for years by the "progressive" educational establishment.
Bush is back on track with the Alito nomination--using his executive-order pen to move vouchers forward would be a great second step.
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