Good News of the Month: Thanks to Boehner, Opportunity Returns for DC Students

Thanks to John Boehner's tenacity, opportunity has been restored for at-risk kids in Washington, DC, one of the lowest performing school districts in the nation.

In 2004, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) was launched offering low-income parents of DC children to apply for a $7500 per year voucher (only about half the per pupil cost in the public schools) to use toward tuition at a private school of their choice. In the few years of operation, 3300 students benefitted and escaped the underperforming and unsafe DC public schools. The results are astoundingly positive. Academic achievement has blossomed and 91% of OSP students graduated high school compared to 55% in the public schools.

But, the teacher's union objected. Opportunity for kids aside, it was all about the money. The public schools get paid for a head count of pupils, regardless of performance. So the union leaned on the Democrat big shots that are always at their beck and call. In 2009, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) attached language to the Democrats Omnibus Spending Bill that killed the OSP program, and Barack Obama signed the legislation.

Shortly after his election as Speaker of the House earlier this year, John Boehner introduced legislation, the SOAR Act, to restore the OSP. Boehner, former Chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee has a well established history of supporting parental choice. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced the legislation in the Senate.

In February, 2011 Patrick Wolf, the principal investigator to watchdog the OSP, testified before Congress, "In my opinion, by demonstrating statistically significant experimental impacts on boosting high school graduation rates and generating a wealth of evidence suggesting that students also benefited in reading achievement, the DC OSP has accomplished what few educational interventions can claim: It markedly improved important education outcomes for low-income inner-city students."

As the latest deadline to extend funding or shut down the federal government approached, Boehner insisted his SOAR Act be part of the Continuing Resolution the House adopted to buy a few days prior to the final 2011 budget deal adopted on April 14.

You might think that Obama, the first post-racial, first African-American President might champion the case for these inner-city poor kids. You might think he would defend these students' opportunity to attend a private school like Sidwell Friends School where his two daughters, Sasha and Malia, are enrolled. You'd be wrong.

Obama unleashed his hounds. "Rigorous evaluation over several years demonstrates that the D.C. program has not yielded improved student achievement by its scholarship recipients compared to other students in D.C.," President Obama's Office of Management and Budget proclaimed in a statement, never citing any evidence to back up the false claim.

As negotiations with the White House and the Democrat controlled Senate grew tenser and a deadline approached, Boehner held firm. Finally, Obama blinked. Boehner's SOAR Act remained in the deal and low-income kids in D.C. won.

It shouldn't be that hard to just do something truly good and life changing for some of the most disadvantaged kids in America. The Democrats perpetuate the myth that they are on the side of the little guy, and seemingly everything they champion is supposedly "for the children." But, when push-comes-to-shove the millions of dollars of campaign contribution and campaign "volunteers" from the unions are far more important than the lives and opportunities of a few thousand kids sentenced to failing public schools because they were born in the wrong zip code.

Among a lot of other reasons that come to mind to give the Speaker a pat on the back, Boehner's willingness to fight for these kids is our choice for really the Good News of the Month.