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Jewish World Review
June 25, 2012/ 5 Tammuz, 5772 , 5772
Republicans missing chance on education
By
Star Parker
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Education is one area where blacks realize they need freedom from government control.
The chronic failure of public schools to notably improve dismal test scores and high dropout rates of black children has made it clear to many black citizens of good will that there has got to be a better way.
Polls show black support for school choice. For example, in a poll done last year in New Jersey by The Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, 54 percent of blacks expressed support for school vouchers compared to 36 percent of whites.
Growing grass roots support among blacks for education alternatives surely influenced the Obama administration's agreement, this past week, to keep the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The administration opposes the program and would have been perfectly happy to see its funding spigot turned off.
This is a modest program, with federal funds available now for 1,615 scholarships for kids in D.C.'s public schools to attend private schools. Its existence and potential for growth was at stake, with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) carrying the ball for it. The new agreement will allow it to continue, with a small provision for 85 new scholarships.
This makes even more perplexing several incidents where Republican state legislators have turned their backs on the education hopes of blacks.
Republicans in Pennsylvania can change the political landscape of their state by helping black aspirations for education freedom. But in a state that some analysts see as conceivably swinging into the Republican column, Republicans are blowing it.
The Pennsylvania state Senate passed a bill last year that would make vouchers available to kids in the worst 5 percent of public schools.
The public schools serving black kids in cities like Philadelphia are disasters. I know from my own survey of pastors in local churches there that hopes for this voucher initiative have been high.
Yet, by all indications it's not going to happen.
The state House, controlled by Republicans, has been sitting on the bill. With no action before the end of the session on June 30, it will be dead.
There is talk of an alternative scholarship bill financed through tax credits. But the most optimistic estimate I have heard is that the scholarship would be worth less than half what the voucher would pay and therefore insufficient on its own to pay full tuition in a private church school.
Courageous leadership by Republicans could have captured black hearts and minds in Pennsylvania's cities that might have paved a path to a new black relationship with Republicans.
But sadly, fear of union power rather than leadership and courage seems to be motivating these legislators.
In 2010, a similar disappointment occurred in Illinois.
In a genuine breakthrough, a black Democrat in the Illinois state Senate, Rev. James Meeks, who is also the pastor of Chicago's largest Baptist congregation, introduced a school voucher bill.
The bill passed the Illinois Senate and then died in the state House, with only 25 of 48 Republicans supporting it. It fell 12 votes short of the 60 needed to pass.
This is not an across the board indictment of Republicans. Two Republican governors -- Mitch Daniels in Indiana and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana -- have spearheaded passage of school voucher programs in their states.
In a new Gallup poll, only 29 percent, an all time low, express "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in our public schools.
The Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and limited government. Nowhere are these principles more needed than in education, and no community needs it more than blacks.
At a time when our country and our poor communities are hurting so badly, any failure of leadership by those in the party of Lincoln is inexcusable.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education.
Previously:
• 06/11/12: Raise levels of personal responsibility, not the minimum wage
• 06/11/12: Free societies soon won't be free if its citizens see freedom as something that should be of responsibility
• 06/04/12: Americans have become decidedly more pro-life
• 05/28/12: Booker's comments about Bain, capitalism should not surprise
• 05/21/12: Obama forcing blacks to make hard choices
• 05/14/12: Fairness? The struggle in our public spaces is about competing worldviews, not neutrality
• 05/07/12: Morality and economy are separate universes?
• 04/30/12: How to keep the poor poor
• 04/23/12: Obama's real 'stay-at-home mom' problem
• 04/16/12: Obama makes foul call for economic 'fairness'
• 04/09/12: GOP's black, Hispanic problem
• 04/02/12: A wakeup call to a nation still sleeping through a crisis
• 03/26/12: Supremes to confront new, energetic efforts to undermine the principles upon which this nation stands
• 03/19/12: Republican race is just getting started
• 03/12/12: Contraception flap 'defines deviancy down'
• 03/05/12: Breitbart's final message to the Left
• 02/27/12: Support for Santorum will grow despite attacks
• 02/20/12: Libs' recent victories fuel Santorum surge
• 02/06/12: Memo to Mitt: Whole nation is on government plantation
• 01/30/12: Obama's vision puts America last
• 01/23/12: Court ruling on ultrasound law worth celebrating
• 01/16/12: Capitalism on trial
• 01/09/12: NAACP plantation masters play race card again
• 01/02/12: Youths' support for Ron Paul is misplaced
• 12/26/11: In search of an ambiguous conservative leader
• 12/19/11: Thank U.S. troops, notably wounded warriors
• 12/12/11: Land of the envious and home of the victim
• 12/05/11: Payroll tax cut is another welfare scam
• 11/28/11: Pray every day that America does not lose its way
• 11/21/11: We're ignoring the Constitution
• 11/14/11: The central issue of our time will define the 2012 presidential election
• 11/07/11: Separation of . . . morality and economy?
• 10/31/11: Every American should listen to Paul Ryan
• 10/24/11: Disrespect for life and disrespect for property go hand in hand
• 10/17/11:The right argument for Cain
• 10/10/11: Occupy Wall Street: More from the culture of narcissism
• 10/03/11: Why so many blacks continue to fail
• 09/26/11: So many GOP debates, so few candidate revelations
• 09/19/11: The the last vestige of the triumph of hope over experience is throwing itself a party. They'll be passing out palms-up portions of pity, but few solutions
• 09/12/11: I'll defend Perry on Social Security Ponzi scheme
• 09/05/11: Marco Rubio's Courageous speech
• 08/28/11: The Steve Jobs/Martin Luther King Jr. Connection
• 08/19/11: Blacks' dilemma with Obama
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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