Education is the key

About a month ago, President Obama, Congress, and the Department of Education decided to end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Basically this was a school voucher that helped poor children, coming from poor families, to attend private schools. Each student would be eligible to receive up to $7,500, with a little over 7,000 students enrolled in this program since 2004. The termination of this voucher program has raised some eyebrows in Washington and beyond. Sure, presidents have their own educational agenda, but is pulling the rug out from under these students really education reform we can believe in?

Understanding President Obama's stance on an assortment of policy issues has proven to be quite difficult. In regards to education reform, it is uncertain whether his fascination with big government and big bureaucracy will truly stick. Assuming Obama continues the act of cutting scholarship programs, we may have bigger problems on our hands than stimulus packages and cigarette taxes. No Child Left Behind was the biggest federal intervention into the realm of education since the 1960's. It was one of the boldest steps forward to address struggling schools throughout the country. Regardless, No Child Left Behind failed because states and schools either lowered their standards to the federal levels, or were unable to sustain educational challenges.

President Obama has an excellent opportunity to reform No Child Left Behind, with a clearer message and more forceful approach. There also needs to be clarification for the meaning of the standards imposed in order for states and schools to be performing above average. Without this clear message, our academic levels will continue to worsen. Obama must say more than how "confident" he is, or how there is a "glimmer of hope" for education. It's time for the American people and the government to get serious about education reform. Our international economic competitors are surpassing us in education, so we need to go above and beyond in order to be competitive in the future. After all, Obama did say that our current education system is "a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out teach us today will out compete us tomorrow." The Obama administration doesn't seem to understand how their policies contradict their goals.

Schools that struggle to meet new standards or don't show significant improvement should be dealt with by the states. Since inner-city schools that serve to poorer neighborhoods are struggling the most, each state needs to overcome the root causes of this trend. Poorer neighborhoods tend to harbor more criminal activity and domestic instability, thus creating a burden on the students and families within those communities. Tackling crime rates while working to improve the schools will ultimately provide a more positive outcome for the student's and their communities. Also, education inequality between the middle-class suburban neighborhoods and inner-city low-income neighborhoods is growing. How fair is it that I had a better education in a small suburban town outside of Raleigh than someone who goes to school in inner-city Greensboro? Perhaps we should allow and assist students in attending schools outside of their district.

Our government spends hundreds of billions of dollars, if not now trillions of dollars, on poverty relief and preventative programs. Excluding those that have lost their jobs as a result of the recession, a lot of the recipients of welfare are poorly educated, come from a troubled background, and are unable to lift themselves from the cyclical nature of poverty. We can keep spending billions of dollars on welfare checks and other alleviative programs, or we can ensure a quality education so future generations can permanently lift themselves out of poverty.

The President spoke to his cabinet the other week, asking them to make a list of budget cuts within their department in order to "set a new tone". Budget cuts are a great idea to help the worsening U.S. debt, but education must remain fully funded on all frontiers. If cutting voucher programs are the new tone the Obama administration wants to set, then we should start to reconsider the worth of his popularity. Education is the key to future success and economic growth, and is essentially the best form of stimulus available to us.