What a coicidence! Just before Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announces a new federal pilot school voucher program the folks deep in the bureaucracy at the Institute of Education Sciences release a study that shows that “public school students did as well as or better than those in private school” in many areas.
That meant that the New York Times report by Diana Jean Schemo on Spellings’ announcement of a $100 million school voucher program could feature this paragraph:
The new legislation was introduced after an Education Department report released Friday, which showed that students attending public schools generally did as well as or better than comparable students in private schools.
And of course the reporter made sure to get an inflammatory quote from liberal activist Ralph Neas:
“The goal of this movement isn’t to help students. It’s to achieve vouchers at any cost.”
Still, the Times did have the decency to insert this quote from Secretary Spellings into their report:
Whatever the report’s findings, Ms. Spellings said, parents with children in public schools that repeatedly fail deserve more options.
Actually, you could put it stronger than that, to balance the flamethrower rhetoric of Ralph Neas.
It is wrong and unjust to condemn little children to lousy inner-city schools and stand in the schoolhouse door protecting the monopoly privileges of the system while generation after generation of children go to rot. And when activists like Ralph Neas trample on the right of parents to get their kids a decent education they ought to be ashamed.
How is that for a start?
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