Don't walk away like I did

In a new commentary ('Poor Families, Not Just the Elite, Deserve School Choice'), our friend Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, reminds us that "Sen. Barack Obama has joined a growing club of elected officials who oppose school vouchers for poor families while sending their own children to private school." Dan reminds us of

the sentiment [Obama] expressed to the American Federation of Teachers this summer: "But what I do oppose is spending public money for private school vouchers. We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them."

But Obama did walk away from public schools when the time came to enroll his own daughters. After serving on the board of a charity that gave tens of millions to public education, Obama decided that Chicago public schools weren't good enough for his daughters. He enrolled them in the private University of Chicago lab school, where elementary school tuition costs more than $18,000 per year. ...

Obama should recognize the urgent need to give poor children -- not just his own children -- the opportunity to attend a private school. He should sympathize with the low-income families who care just as much about their children's future, but lack a senator's salary to send their children to private school.