Opponents scoff that $7,500 is not sufficient to send a child to private school. Well, it may not pay for Sidwell Friends, St. Alban's or The National Cathedral School, where so many members of Congress send their own children. But $7,500 is more than enough to pay for the average private school in the Washington, D.C., area. A Cato Institute survey found that the average tuition for private elementary schools is $5,000.
While only about 10 percent of parents nationwide send their kids to private or parochial schools, among members of the House of Representatives the figure is 41 percent, and among member of the Senate it is 46 percent. If all of the members of Congress who choose private education for their own children supported vouchers for poor children, the votes would not even be close.
Though "self-proclaimed" black leaders angrily denounce vouchers, most African Americans support them. A 2002 National Opinion Research poll found that 57.4 percent of blacks support vouchers "where parents would get money from the government to send their children to the public, private or parochial school of their choice." Among Hispanics, the figure was closer to 75 percent.
Bill Clinton's secretary of education, Richard Riley, told me once that his job was "to protect the public schools." That is the way Eleanor Holmes Norton, Richard Gephardt and many another liberal see their responsibility. Who gets forgotten? The children.