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.