- District to Experience Middle School Surge, Study Says
-
Obama's War on School Vouchers
District to Experience Middle School Surge, Study Says
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
February 15, 2012
Ripples from the recent mini-baby booms across the city, already visible in preschool and pre-K enrollment, will soon be lapping at the doors of the District’s middle schools.
That means D.C. officials need to start planning now, says a new study by D.C. Action for Children. The non-profit advocacy group studied OSSE and census data in collaboration with the Annie E. Casey Foundation to develop a compelling set of ward-level demographic snapshots.
The study found that half of the city’s wards (2,3,4 and 6) show sharp spikes in child population under age five since 2000, ranging from 12 percent (Ward 2) to 18 percent (Ward 3). To serve the rising cohort of middle schoolers, the city will need to make “significant improvements to the city’s secondary schools to ensure they are high quality for students in all neighborhoods,” the study said.
Some areas experienced sharp drops. In Ward 8, under-fives are down 10 percent from the 2000 census, while the total child population (under 18) has declined 16 percent since 2000, researchers found.
Despite a small city-wide decline, child poverty is up slightly in Wards 7 (37 to 40 percent) and Ward 8 (47 to 48 percent) and unchanged in Ward 5 (28 percent). On the plus side, the proportion of residents over 25 with high school diplomas is up 12 percent in Ward 7 and 14 percent in Ward 8, exceeding the citywide average increase of 9 percent.
Obama's War on School Vouchers
The Wall Street Journal
By Jason L. Riley
February 14, 2012
In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama spoke about the importance of kids staying in school and even urged states to raise the dropout age to 18. So it's passing strange that his new $3.8 trillion budget provides no new money for a school voucher program in Washington, D.C., that is producing significantly higher graduation rates than the D.C. public school average.
Adam Emerson, director of parental choice at the Fordham Institute on President Obama turning his back on the DC voucher program.
The Opportunity Scholarship Program offers vouchers to low-income students to attend private schools. A 2010 study published by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas found that the scholarship recipients had graduation rates of 91%. The graduation rate for D.C. public schools was 56%, and it was 70% for students who entered the lottery for a voucher but didn't win.
Because the president's teachers union allies are opposed to school choice for poor people, Mr. Obama ignores or downplays these findings. He repeatedly has tried to shutter the program, even though it is clearly advancing his stated goal of increasing graduation rates and closing the black-white achievement gap.
The good news is that House Speaker John Boehner, who went to bat for the voucher program last year when the Obama administration attempted to phase it out, said yesterday through a spokesman that the funding cuts won't stand. The bad news is that we have a president who is more interested in doing right by teachers unions than doing right by ghetto kids confined to failing schools.