CNN Contributor Roland Martin on D.C. Voucher Program

John Hanlon | March 12, 2009 8:05 PM

Although I do not often agree with CNN contributor Roland Martin, I was pleasantly surprised with his CNN.com column yesterday about the D.C. voucher program.

Martin wrote:

"Democrats say they believe in school choice, but they don't fully accept the gamut of choices. They will happily tout charter schools, also opposed by the national teachers unions, but stop at vouchers.

Why? Because Republicans have consistently advocated for vouchers, and Democrats have convinced themselves that vouchers will somehow destroy the public school infrastructure.

Now, some believe the Obama administration is sending mixed signals because Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said he doesn't want to see kids thrown out of Washington schools who are already in the existing voucher program. Fine. But the reality is that after this year, no new kids will be allowed to enroll in the program, and that folks, is killing the program."

Townhall.com blogger Matt Lewis put up a great video about the program last week. Unfortunately, many Democrats on Capitol Hill were not listening to the voices of the students who benefited from this great program. Otherwise, they would have voted to save the program's funding for next year when an amendment that would have done that was voted down Tuesday evening.