School Choice for Me, but Not for Thee

Clint Bollick had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week that I started to write about, but got caught up in something else. In essesnce, Bollick notes that when it comes to Presidential candidates, particularly on the Democratic side, they fail to practice what they preach about support for public schools and school choice. The lead paragraphs say it all:

There's something about our nation's capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. Perhaps it's the glimpse that Washington, D.C. affords into inner-city public schools.

But in most cases this appreciation of school choice extends only to their own children -- and not to the millions of children in failing public schools. Indeed, a nearly perfect correlation exists among Democratic presidential candidates who have exercised school choice for their own children and those who would deny such choices to the parents of other children.

Bill Clinton and his now candidate wife, Hillary sent their only daughter to the elite Sidwell Friends school. John Edwards, as a Senator, sent his children to a private parochial school. Barack Obama's kids attend a private school in Chicago. Al Gore, whose Senator father send the younger Gore to the St. Albans School, also sent his children to private schools.

All the while these people, as politicians, proclaimed to oppose any school choice program, including vouchers, because it might be a drain on public school resources. So the hypocritical stance boils down to resources, these leaders have the financial resources so it makes it okay for them to choose private school.

The fact that they chose private school, in and of itself, is not all that unusual. I would wager that the leaders of the NEA and AFT in Washington DC don't send their kids to public schools in the Nation's capital. I don't begrudge these people their choice, what I detest is that they don't want to offer the same choices to everyone else no matter what their financial resources.