The Education Union President

As education unions, which routinely throw their support to Democrats, have little to do with whether children actually learn anything, the decision by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats to eliminate a program providing vouchers to children in underperforming schools in the District of Colombia is sad but unsurprising. George Will explains:

Not content with seeing the program set to die after the 2009-10 school year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan (former head of Chicago's school system, which never enrolled an Obama child) gratuitously dashed even the limited hopes of another 200 children and their parents. Duncan, who has sensibly chosen to live with his wife and two children in Virginia rather than in the District, rescinded the scholarships already awarded to those children for the final year of the program, beginning in September. He was, you understand, thinking only of the children and their parents: He would spare them the turmoil of being forced by, well, Duncan and other Democrats to return to terrible public schools after a tantalizing one-year taste of something better. Call that compassionate liberalism.