Parents of the 216 students in Washington, D.C. who have seen Mr. Obama’s congressional cohorts gut the Opportunity Scholarship program must have found cold comfort from the President’s soothing words on NBC. The Heritage Foundation’s able education analyst Lindsey Burke tells us what Mr. Obama said to The Today Show’s Matt Lauer:

I’ll be very honest with you. Given my position, if I wanted to find a great public school for Malia and Sasha to be in, we could probably maneuver to do it. But the broader problem is: For a mom or a dad who are working hard but don’t have a bunch of connections, don’t have a choice in terms of where they live, they should be getting the same quality education as anybody else, and they don’t have that yet.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter did find a good public school in Washington to send their daughter to. But now, the Obamas have rejected that option. While his administration shuts the door to excellence for thousands in the District—and nationwide—the President and Mrs. Obama conveniently skip out.

I don’t criticize Barack and Michelle Obama for choosing a safe and effective school for their beloved daughters. The parental choice movement affirms the right of parents to make the best choice for their children.

What I criticize is the “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrisy that characterizes liberal approaches to education. President Obama and the liberal majorities in both houses of Congress are entirely beholden to the liberal leadership of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

It was the late Al Shanker, president of the AFT, who famously said parents are not “qualified” to choose their children’s schools. Shanker was a smart guy, but that was a dumb statement. First, if parents are not equipped to make the decision about where their kids go to school, how could you possibly trust parents to choose a president? After all, presidents have access to nuclear weapons. Second, if parents are not capable of choosing their children’s schools, who is responsible for their lack of capability? Eighty-nine percent of Americans go through those same the public school systems dominated by the NEA and AFT. If millions endure twelve years of public schooling and are still not capable of making a decision about something so close to home as their children’s school, it’s a terrible indictment of public education.

Who’d have thought that Al Shanker, the man who opposed every voucher initiative, every tuition tax credit measure, every attempt to loosen restrictions on home schooling, would deliver such a strong critique of his own “one size fits all” school monopoly?