Let’s understand why school choice is important. As in the free marketplace, competition creates better schools, public as well as private, better teachers, and thus reforms education- unlike pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into public schools to get nothing in return, which is what we do now. School vouchers do not carry any additional expense for a state because they primarily transfer money between schools, a fact that worries most union-loving Democrats because taxpayer money would likely be diverted from failing public schools to charter and private schools.

Advocates of school choice had three good reasons to rejoice within the past week. As reported here, on Capitol Hill, while House Democrats voted to protect public sector unions, Republicans passed the SOAR Act, which followed through with their pledge to reinstate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the hallmark school choice program for low income children in the nation’s capital. While it remains to be seen whether the Senate will vote to pass the SOAR Act and, if so, whether the President will sign onto it, the Republicans are sticking to their conservative agenda and using their constitutional authority to promote reform of education through an expansion of charter schools and private school vouchers.

Meanwhile, taking the lead among the states, Indiana’s Republican-led state House passed the most expansive school voucher program in the nation, pushing ahead with school choice not just for low-income families, but for those in the middle-income bracket as well. Parents earning up to $60,000 will be eligible for vouchers and, within several years, there will be no limit on the number of children who can receive them. Despite a five-week walkout to Illinois by Indiana state House Democrats, the bill is likely to pass since Republicans control both Houses and the governor’s seat.

The third portion of this triple crown lies in a positive, but painfully narrow, decision by the Supreme Court. On April 4th, the nation’s highest court decided, in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, that tax credits that pay for children to go to church-affiliated schools cannot be challenged on constitutional grounds.

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Compared to President Obama’s other initiatives, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program barely registers on the government’s balance sheet. Yet the $7,500 scholarships for poor children are apparently still too costly for a White House beholden to Big Labor.

The Obama administration has officially declared its opposition to the SOAR Act, legislation approved Wednesday by the House of Representatives that would restore funding to the program for low-income families in the District of Columbia. Obama and congressional Democrats put the program on life support before Republicans seized control of the House.

“While the President’s FY 2012 Budget requests funding to improve D.C. public schools and expand high-quality public charter schools, the Administration opposes targeting resources to help a small number of individuals attend private schools rather than creating access to great public schools for every child,” the Obama administration declared in its policy statement.

The administration’s justification: Scholarships have not yielded improved student achievement. Unfortunately for Obama, that statement runs counter to what the administration’s own Department of Education reported in a federal evaluation last year.

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Barack Obama attended a private school as a youth. He even sends his daughters to one. But as president he wants to deny that same opportunity to low-income students in the District of Columbia.

After two years of limiting educational choices for the poorest kids in D.C., Obama is about to meet his match.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), a strong supporter of school choice, is hitting back hard with new legislation this week to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, a school voucher program that the Obama administration has left on its last leg.

Boehner will also send a not-so-subtle message to Obama during his State of the Union address. He has invited parents, students and teachers who have benefited from school choice to sit in his box in the House chamber. They include three children who are D.C. Opportunity Scholarship recipients, D.C. Parents for School Choice founder Virginia Walden Ford and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who oversees many of the private schools students attend.

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Our stomachs turned a bit this morning when we watched a YouTube video of part of last weekend’s DC AFT rally in Washington, D.C.  You can see it here:

The event was billed as the “Rally for Respect.” If the AFT wants respect, we respectfully submit the following suggestions:

Number one – Stop threatening people. During the rally, an unidentified male speaker was clearly heard on the video threatening D.C. school Chancellor Michelle Rhee. “Michelle Rhee had better watch her back,” the large, angry man chanted into the microphone. That clearly sounds like a physical threat, typically used by street gangs. His next few words were not clear, but then he added something about “She’s going down.”

Perhaps Ms. Rhee would be wise to contact D.C. police. Union thugs may very well have her on their target list. How disturbing.

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