Voucher lawsuit ironies

We have a guest post from Tampa resident Tim Curtis that was also in the Tampa Tribune today as a letter to the editor.  So for those who don't get or read the Tribune:

A news story that hasn’t received a lot of attention from the media is Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent lawsuit against the Louisiana’s school voucher program. Even though 90 percent of the children who use them are minorities and all were originally in failing schools, the Department of Justice is suing because the program is interfering with the government’s school integration plan for the state. In effect, to achieve some arbitrary racial balance, Holder is trying to deny these kids the quality education their parents want them to have.

There are two big ironies here. One is that the anti-segregation laws which are the basis for his action were created to give minorities a better education are now being used to prevent that. And two, President Obama, Holder’s boss, talks a lot about helping more Americans afford college. Yet if his attorney general succeeds, many children in Louisiana will not be ready to attend college no matter how much financial aid is available.

Tim Curtis
Tampa

Attorney General Eric Holder

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Thanks Tim for the post. And the Eye adds:  Education is a local issue and Florida has one of the largest and growing school voucher programs in the country. 

The Wall Street Journal weighed in with an Op-ed yesterday: (behind the subscription firewall)

Asked in a radio interview this week about the Justice Department's recent lawsuit to block Louisiana's school voucher program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan pleaded ignorance. "I'm not familiar with that lawsuit," said the man whose department scrutinizes state education reforms in great detail as part of the Race to the Top competition. "That's between the Department of Justice and the state of Louisiana."  

The Advocate daily newspaper in Baton Rouge reports that former Justice Department Civil Rights chief Thomas Perez, who is now Labor Secretary, was nosing around the state earlier this year. On Thursday we reported that Mr. Perez had threatened California with a loss of federal cash if it didn't exempt Teamster and Amalgamated Transit Union transit workers from pension reforms. If Mr. Perez is now also running education policy, it really is time for Mr. Duncan to leave.

The ironies of the Obama Administration and his Cabinet just continue on and on......so who's next on their hit list?