Fox News: Obama’s Education Policy Gets an ‘F’

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

Teacher unions are ecstatic. It is only April and President Obama has already delivered most of their many wishes.

The “stimulus” package gave teachers large salary increases. And over the pleading of D.C.’s mayor and residents, Obama will phase out the voucher system for poor D.C. residents. Now public school teachers and administrators in the District of Columbia do not need to worry about trying to improve, as the competition was wiped out by the stroke of a pen.

Poor D.C. parents no longer have a chance to send their children to private schools such as the ones the Obamas send their own children to.

And it is a protectionism that has a real cost. A new U.S. Department of Education study released last Friday confirms what the parents and children in the program knew: children who had received vouchers since the spring of 2004 had learned the equivalent of 1.5 to 2 years more learning than those students who had stayed in public schools.

Furthermore, Obama’s budget blueprints passed by the House and Senate last week will increase the demand for unionized teachers by expanding the trend for more public schooling that was already in the “stimulus” package — with adding on pre-kindergarten classes as well as lengthening both the school day and the school year. . . . .