Michelle's Choice

It's great to have options regarding where to send your kids to school - something that Democrats believe deeply in, but only for the rich.

President-elect Obama and his wife, Michelle, came to town and did what people with young children usually do before moving. They looked at their new house and then Mrs. Obama checked out the school choices for their two young daughters.

The schools Mrs. Obama visited were private, not public. While no decision has yet been made, it seems obvious the girls enjoy their private school in Chicago and have flourished in it. Would the Obamas, in order to pander to the teachers unions, place their daughters in one of Washington, D.C.’s miserable public schools? Let’s hope not. That would be a form of intellectual and social child abuse.

True. No responsible parent would put their kids into public schools like these - and people with options generally avoid all public schools if they're not in segregated, privileged suburbs.

Should they choose either Sidwell Friends School (where Chelsea Clinton attended) or Georgetown Day School — Mrs. Obama visited both — or a public school, the Obamas have the ability to make a choice for their children, a choice the president-elect would deny to every other American who cannot afford to pay private school tuition. This is not the vaunted fairness for which Obama campaigned. This is not spreading the educational and intellectual wealth around.

How does Barack explain his behavior? Probably the same way other Democratic leaders, who throw a nice big slap into the face of those working people they preach public schools to.

This year, 1,900 D.C. schoolchildren were allowed to attend private schools, thanks to congressional vouchers. With Democrats about to be in charge of all three branches of government, will Obama and his fellow Democrats send them back to failed schools? D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has suggested as much. Parents interviewed by Washington TV stations overwhelmingly want their children to remain where they are. Is it not cruel to force them back into a broken system?

Many Members of Congress choose private schools for their children. Senators Edward Kennedy and Hillary Clinton have been outspoken opponents of school choice yet have sent their children to private schools. According to a 2007 Heritage Foundation survey, “...37 percent of representatives and 45 percent of senators in the 110th Congress sent their children to private schools — almost four times the rate of the general population.” Yet many of them vote against letting the rest of us have the same choice.

Our kids deserve better schools, but the partnership between teachers unions and the Democratic party make that impossible.

This will offer children trapped in bad schools the brighter future they deserve and the country will get the better educated citizenry it desperately needs.

Renegade

It's always the same question with liberal politicians - why don't their kids attend public schools?

Where will the Obama girls go to school? Will Michelle and Barack Obama choose private or public? What statement will their choice make? These are some of the questions on the minds of many Washington observers after the news that Michelle Obama visited a private school in D.C this week.

The unspoken reality is that people with the money to send their kids to private schools keep them out of urban public schools, owned and operated by Democrats and crippled by liberal ideology and the Democrats partnership with the teachers unions, and send them where they'll get a good education.

The Post's education columnist, Jay Mathews, is betting on Georgetown Day School as the Obamas' likely choice. Mathews says this is fitting on two fronts: Georgetown Day School was the first racially integrated school in D.C., and it is similar to the academically rigorous University of Chicago Laboratory Schools that Malia, a fifth grader, and Sasha, a second grader, currently attend. Several key Obama advisers send their children there.

Democrats should get called on it whenever they opt out of public schools - over time, perhaps voters would start to realize that Democrats operate on an educational double standard - they refuse to allow school choice, except for the affluent.

There is also the well-known fact that, despite some progress, D.C. schools are among the most dysfunctional, academically underachieving schools in the country. If Obama decides to send his daughters to a public school in the city, he would be the first president to do so since Jimmy Carter.