Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama visited a Denver-area school this week, offering his characteristically uplifting words — and not much else.
“I’m here to hold up this school and these students as an example of what’s possible in education,” Obama told those gathered at the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, “if we’re willing to try new ideas and new reforms based not on ideology but on what works to give our children the best possible chance in life.”
Should all “ideology” be discarded? Or only the “ideology” Obama finds distasteful? What if parental choice and competition offer kids the “best possible chance” for success? Would Obama then support any substantive reforms that embrace those precepts?
Up to this point, Obama has peddled a tired canard linking education failure to lack of funding. Nothing about obstructive unions? Nothing about increased teacher accountability? I wonder why.
Obama’s Denver visit coincided neatly with an ugly little display by some teachers who decided to skip work in a “sick-out” to protest a contract offer from the Denver school district.
How preposterous was their demonstration? Well, the average teacher is being offered an 18 percent increase in base pay (all teachers would receive over a 5 percent increase) — not to mention a lifetime of security and a hefty pension.
Teachers claim they are distraught over the allocation of Denver’s merit-pay program. Understandable. When you’re in a collective, it must be difficult to grasp that merit pay is rewarded to those who merit more pay. If you hand it out to everyone, well, the whole idea is shot.
And if you happen to be a parent who finds absolutely no merit in the abandonment of your kids . . . tough luck.
Obama’s visit also coincided with Gov. Bill Ritter signing a bill (sponsored by a pro-school choice Democrat) which grants principals a modest measure of autonomy from stifling union rules.
So it’s nice that Obama stopped in at a Colorado public school that has experienced success with poor kids. But Mapleton is a rarity. Most success stories in Colorado education are found elsewhere.
Obama might have done better visiting the Denver School of Science and Technology, a relatively new independent charter school (Obama claims to support charters) featuring a diverse population and rigorous academic program. Like Mapleton, every senior there was accepted to a four-year college.
Are you curious how DSST could achieve in a few years what union-controlled public schools have failed to do in decades? You’re not the only one. It’s about independence and choice.
In Milwaukee, not far from Obama’s hometown of Chicago, a voucher program for low-income students has been a stirring success.
A new report by Dr. John Robert Warren, a professor at the University of Minnesota, shows that public schools in Milwaukee would have graduated almost 20 percent more students from 2003 and 2007 had they kept pace with the voucher students. And as the report points out, the average household income of voucher students was 15 percent lower than those for kids in public schools.
In Florida, like Colorado, a voucher program for underprivileged kids was passed and subsequently killed by unions in the courts. Yet, a recent study done by Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse details how low-performing public schools in Florida improved during the time vouchers existed.
Increasingly, inner-city Democrats support more school choice. Shouldn’t Obama see past ideology as well?
It would, to some extent, transform some of this self-admiring rhetoric about “change” from empty talk to genuine example. As of now, this “unity” stuff seems to be a one-way road.
Reach columnist David Harsanyi at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@ .
