Is it failing? No--it's becoming evermore popular, especially as public school educational numbers circle the drain. Is it expensive? No--unless you call $18 million dollars expensive. Even the Pell Grant additions I mentioned earlier are not so cost-effective as the DC Voucher system. It seems the only reason one would have to vote against such a cheap-yet-effective measure is found here: the voucher program takes students out of public education. Note how I didn't say "students AND money," because that's another hidden benefit of vouchers--in the case of the DC program's video, the cost of one year of public school is $14,000 per student. The voucher program only offers $7500 per year. That's a net profit for the government (since funds for public education are taken from the general tax fund) of $13,500 per student per year, and they don't have to use it on the student involved, because he or she is not attending a public institution! It's like having your cake and eating it too!
So in reality, is there any answer to the lovely lady's question in the video? Why in the hell cancel the program? Certainly not from the standpoint of Obama's "whether it works" criterion--if he at least followed his own preachy rhetoric, the program would be totally safe. Rather, I would like to posit my own possible answer, in line with the hypocrisy of the above-mentioned writer, Jay Mathews. The key to a docile population is not education, but propaganda; one cannot subjugate a population merely by force of arms, but it is all too easy for a people to subjugate themselves by the force of ideas.
Independent schooling often leads to independent thinking, as the video above clearly describes; students whose families have control over what is taught invariably get more focused, better-equipped education for a cheaper price than what the government has to spread scattershot on the general-ed pigs at the grant trough. What I can only describe as "education postponement" is the product of socialized state-approved curricula, where only "grade-appropriate" learning is allowed and all independent thought is curbed behind a sanitized syllabus, a dumbed-down learning curve (for catching up those who don't want to learn), and a constant deferral of basic and necessary learning until just a few grades higher--grade-school prep, middle-school prep, high school prep, college prep, grad school prep, post-doc prep, and finally, unfortunately, shockingly, "real life."
Students now entering their very first grades will not be taught how to balance a checkbook until high school; they will not be taught how to apply for a job ever, nor how to properly avoid getting STDs; they will not be allowed to ignore subjects that do not interest them even in PhD-level programs, thanks to imbecilic "general education requirements." They will be given a basic reading test upon entering college, disregarding the fact that successfully entering college while illiterate is both a monumental achievement for the student and a massive indictment for the institution being hoodwinked. And most tellingly, they will receive little or no realistic job skills, either in on-the-job training, apprenticeships, or simple work. The term "vocational prep" is universally maligned as a dumb jock idiot course of study, while the "progressive" and "enlightened" Liberal Arts education teaches people to hate whites, go green, cheer on the deaths-by-starvation of 4 billion people, and avoid anything too horribly pedestrian like "communication skills" or "work ethic." Who needs a work ethic when you can be the most educated coffee-jerk on the planet?
Obama is most certainly correct on one assumption: this problem is neither "liberal or conservative," mainly because liberals and conservatives agree that socialized education is to the benefit of all, regardless of the detriment to the individual students. So long as students are forced into "No Child Left Behind" classes that make sure no child bothers to achieve, those same stupid students will agree with them and continue to vote them into office.
