School Choice
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/28/opinio...ice-louisiana/
"In most of America, children are victims of a ZIP code lottery; their education depends on the social status of their parents. If you are born into a home in a good school district, or your parents can afford private school tuition, you'll be OK. If not, you are subject to whatever the government provides, good or bad.
Despite the ability for school choice to change this, the left fights to stop it, in the name of union special interests and on the spurious grounds that it will harm public education.
This is nonsense. The hypocrisy that the left perpetuates is this: Poor parents are not allowed school choice, but rich parents can buy it.
But not in New Orleans, not in Louisiana and not on my watch. Thanks to the reforms we passed, the dollars follow the child instead of the child following the dollars. That means every child has the opportunity to go to any school, regardless of geography or income."
While Jindal is not a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination I absolutely applaud what he has done in Louisiana when it comes to schools.
"The turnaround since 2005 shows a true Louisiana comeback:
-- Before Katrina, only 54% of students in the city were graduating from high school on time; now 73% are.
-- Before Katrina, the percentage of New Orleans' students on grade level was 35%; now it's 63%.
-- Before Katrina, only 32% of black students in New Orleans were at or above grade level, compared to 40% of black students statewide. Now, 59% of black students were at or above grade level compared to 54% statewide.
-- Before Katrina, 64% of schools were considered failing; now, about 11% are, even though we have raised the bar for what constitutes failure several times since.
For students attending private schools on public dollars, almost all of whom arrived several years behind, their lives are being turned around. The percentage of students who are on grade level in third grade English grew by 20 percentage points and in math by 28 percentage points between 2008 and 2013.
Despite all this, the Obama administration's Justice Department sued the state of Louisiana, unsuccessfully, on the notion that our scholarship program may be racially discriminatory. I am not making that up.
Before they wasted everyone's time, someone should have told them that nearly 90% of children in the program are minority students and all of them entered it voluntarily. A majority of educators in New Orleans are also minorities, as are more than half of school principals. So are the majority of community volunteers on school boards."
Liberals love the race card. It really is a pity that they are so entrenched with the teacher's union (probably one of the scummiest unions in existence). You would think liberals would LOVE the idea of giving poor people a chance to attend the 'rich kids' school. That is what school choice is about. It is about empowering parents to send their kids to wherever they want using existing tax dollars that were already being allocated by virtue of district lottery. +10 for Jindal.
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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
