Who Cares About Inner City Schools?

According to Sen. Barack Obama, the conservative solution to pervasive school failure is "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

That’s what he told the American Federation of Teachers.

Of course, he’s right. Conservatives flog away at pushing for more school choice and more access to vouchers for the children of the poor in lousy inner-city school districts and the Democrats keep cold-cocking them. You get really tired after being cold-cocked for the tenth or eleventh time.

In any case, Democrats and teachers unions are still standing in the schoolhouse door with the tired rhetoric the you don’t care about kids unless you pay them more money.

It’s the great civil-rights issue of the twenty-first century, and as usual, Democrats are on the side of injustice and want to keep blacks enslaved on the liberal plantation.

In the Wall Street Journal today there’s an editorial criticizing Obama’s union-friendly approach to education.

Mr. Obama told an interviewer recently that he opposes school choice because, "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." The Illinois Senator has it exactly backward.

Kids at the top already have school choice. Maybe their parents can afford to live in a ritzy area with decent schools. Or maybe they can afford private school. Sen. Obama should know. His kids go to a fancy private school.

[The Obama] daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.

But just a few blocks south of tony Hyde Park in South Chicago kids don’t have the kind of choices that the rich Obama kids have.

And don’t forget, the Obamas are “the rich.” Based on Michelle’s $400,000 salary at the University of Chicago Hospital alone the Obamas are in the richest one percent of income earners.

You wonder. Why do we conservatives bother. Black parents are never going to vote for Republicans. So why should we bother to help their kids get a decent education?

Because it’s the right thing to do.

Because it’s a question of justice for the poor.