Confessions of a Private School Drop Out: Obama and the Voucher Dilemma April 14, 2009

Do America's Children Have a Right to Private Schools?

No matter what happens to me in America good or bad, I will always love my country and be grateful for the education I received. Despite growing up on welfare, my mother and grandmother were determined not to send me to Chicago Public Schools.

My grandmother, a maid scrapped together enough money to send me to private school through the 6th grade. There were a few times that we were late with the tuition. The principal would stand by my school desk and set a white envelopment in front of me. I did not need to open it. I knew what it said. Either pay up or I don’t come to school the next week. Once I missed an entire month of school due to unpaid tuition. Sooner or later grandmother would save the day by pawning something and back in uniform I was.

During the late 1980′s grandmother became too ill to work. We could no longer afford for pay my tuition.

I went to a public school for the first time and I was terrified.
It turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life.

The teachers looked down on most of the students. They actually liked me more than the other students because I transferred in from a private school and my test scores were better.

Yes I was their golden egg. I won the spelling bees and did everything that they wanted from the other students but could not seem to get.

Every week my home room teacher would proudly announce, “Afrocity got the highest test score”.

I so wished she did not do that.

It meant bullies taking their frustrations out me during lunch, gym, on the way home, or in the bathroom stall.

I no longer had the security of hiding my lack of a fashionable wardrobe behind a uniform. My “flooding” pants from the Salvation Army thrift shop were the subject of locker room jokes. “Girl comb your hair and pull up your gym shoes” they would yell. Or even worse they would hum old Negro spirituals like “Wade in the Water” whenever I walked by.

It makes me shudder even now decades later. I continued to a Chicago Public High School for the “gifted” which was somewhat more bearable. At least there we all had the common goal of wanting to get the hell out.

I adored college and graduate school and have a successful career that I love.

I had put most of the bad public school memories behind me until recently when I heard about the some of the classmates of Sasha and Malia Obama at the Sidwell Friends School. There 1,700 students that would not be able to attend private schools if were not for the $7,500 vouchers they receive.

When Obama was a presidential candidate in 2008, he stated that he supported the vouchers.

Obama Open to Private School Vouchers
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the New York Sun | February 15, 2008

Senator Obama said this week that he is open to supporting private school vouchers if research shows they work.

“I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn,” Mr. Obama, who has previously said he opposes vouchers, said in a meeting with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “We’re losing several generations of kids, and something has to be done.”

Education analysts said Mr. Obama’s statement is the closest they have ever seen a Democratic presidential candidate come to embracing the idea of vouchers. Vouchers are taxpayer-funded scholarships that allow families to opt out of public school and use their government-allotted education dollars to attend a private school instead. They are despised by teachers unions, powerful players in Democratic politics.

That was February 2008. What happened?

So tell me “Dear Leader” Obama. if you stated during your presidential campaign that you were in favor of voucher programs that are proven to be effective, why did you allow your Secretary of Eduction, Arne Duncan to bury the results of study that said that the voucher program in Washington D.C. was succeeding? Why did you allow the termination of the $7,500 Opportunity Scholarship Vouchers for disadvantaged students in D.C.

Arne Ducnan was Obama’s bud in Chicago by the way. Duncan’s grade school alma mater is the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (you guessed it –a Private School) and he was also the CEO of Chicago Public Schools (cough cough).

Would you like to meet some of the children whose lives will change forever because of this decision?

Meet Sarah and James Parker. They attended Sidwell with your daughters.

Their mother Deborah Parker worries that end of the voucher program would mean that Sarah and James would have to leave Sidwell which would be emotionally unsettling to say the least.

“I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards,” Ms. Parker says. “I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell.” It’s not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt’s students are proficient in reading or math.”

I also would like you to meet another student who benefited from the D.C. vouchers scholarships. “Mercedes C.” who appeared on the Fox News Glenn Beck Program this March.

Uh-Oh

On April 14 from a Washington Post editorial this weekend:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools. The abrupt decision — made a week after 200 families had been told that their children were being awarded scholarships for the coming fall — comes despite a new study showing some initial good results for students in the program and before the Senate has had a chance to hold promised hearings. For all the talk about putting children first, it’s clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way.

Officials who manage the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program sent letters this week to parents notifying them that the scholarships of up to $7,500, were being rescinded because of the decision by the Education Department. Citing the political uncertainty surrounding vouchers, a spokesperson for Mr. Duncan told us that it is not in the best interest of students and their parents to enroll them in a program that may end a year from now.

Thanks to Mr. Duncan, it seems that Sasha and Malia Obama will have no one to share their extra cookies with at lunch.

I certainly hope that these children have a smoother transition into the public school system than I did.

Meanwhile back on Hopey Change Island, President Obama continues to “walk” miracles while BO the White House puppy gets extra cookies leftover from those many school lunches that the Obama girls have no one to share with.

Courtesy of American Thinker.

Who is More Deserving of an Honorary Degree? Obama or Kermit the Frog?

Who Deserves the ASU Honorary Degree More? Kermit?

Or Obama?

Oh the moral judgment that surrounds conferring an honorary degree. Drama seems to follow President Obama everywhere. A little bit of drama can be a good thing but when it comes to our “Dear Leader” , drama often occurs in a situation where ridicule and guilt are assigned. The social role of the Obamabots is interrogation and marginalization of the offender. After the firing of the CEO of General Motors, I am afraid that things may not end there.

When I learned that Arizona State University did not grant Obama an honorary degree, I frankly did not care. I really did not know why the mainstream media allowed the story to get so much airtime. Ahhh, but I forgot (smacks forehead)! Whenever Obama- the liberal protagonist fails, that failure actually evokes memories of his greatness and the Obamabots rally to his defense.

Take for example Dawn Teo who writes for Huffington Post:

TEMPE, ARIZONA – Universities typically confer an honorary degree on commencement speakers, particularly those who have reached the pinnacle of their career or achieved the top of their field. Arizona State University (ASU), though, says it will not confer an honorary degree on this year’s commencement speaker, President Barack Obama, because “his body of work is yet to come.”

ASU Media Relations Director Sharon Keeler says, unlike other universities, the processes for selecting commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients are independent. She says that honorary degrees are given “for an achievement of eminence” and that Obama was not considered for an honorary degree because his body of achievements, at this time, does not fit within that criteria.

According to ASU, Obama did not receive an honorary degree because they felt that at this time, he did not meet their standards. Okay, so he did not meet their standards get over it! But no, Teo goes on to write:

Writing two best-sellers? Not outstanding. Developing one of the largest grassroots organizations in the world? Nothing special. Becoming the first African American President of the United States? Good, but nothing to write home about.

What “grassroots organization” is Ms. Teo referring to? ACORN??? He ran for POTUS and had the advantage of attracting young people who were internet savvy, big name celebrities performing concerts for him and a PAYPAL option on his campaign website.

Could someone tell me why becoming the first African American President of the United States qualifies Barack Obama for an honorary degree? She did not say just “President”, she said “the first African American President“. That statement waves red flags for me. In my opinion, Obama should not receive any honorary degree just for being the first person of color to be elected to POTUS.

But there’s more.

Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson writing for Blacknews.com in an article entitled “An Honorary Degree for Kermit The Frog But Not President Obama ” states:

It’s not clear if Arizona State University President Michael Crow had any say in the decision not to grant President Obama, the school’s commencement speaker, an honorary degree. But one thing’s for sure the dumbest thing that school officials said in telling why they won’t grant an honorary degreee [sic] to President Obama was not that he didn’t have a credible body of work and thus supposedly was unfit for the honorary degree. It was that the commencement committee may not have even considered him for the degree in the first place. Here are the names of the wise ones on ASU’s Honorary Degrees Committee who snubbed President Obama for the honorary degreee [sic].

Hutchinson continues by naming each and every member of the ASU Honorary Degrees Committee who “snubbed” Obama. I will not list the members again but skip to his main point:

“The whole thing is either ludicrous or farcical depending on how charitable one wants to be. By any measure–organization, political mastery, historic trend setting, his education and legal writings, research and instruction, and intellect—President Obama’s merits speak for themselves…The reason for the degree snub then can’t be lack of merit or a lack of a body of work. It’s something else and that something else speaks to the politics and money behind who gets an honorary degree and why they get it.“

I find it rather interesting that Hutchinson mentions Obama’s “legal writings”. From all that I have read, I understood as editor Obama had never published anything in the Harvard Law Review. There was one unpublished article but that hardly constitutes as “legal writings”. This is not Abraham Lincoln (despite what the MSM tells you) or Clarence Darrow. The last sentence deserves a comment. It implies that Obama was worthy of the degree and the ONLY possible reason he did not receive one is because of some old boy network, tomfoolery, political, fat cat shenanigans going on at ASU.

It gets even better. Here is where the marginalization part comes into play. Hutchinson mentions prior recipients of honorary degrees from ASU:

“Universities have even been known to award them to politicians who have never taken pen to paper. This was the case in 2001 when Yale University awarded an honorary degree to George W. Bush. He was barely one year into his presidency. The sum of Bush’s academic accomplishment from Yale was a degree in history in 1968.

ASU also honored its favored political son, Barry M. Goldwater, with an honorary degree in 1961. It didn’t hurt that Goldwater was the state’s most influential US senator and could steer a lot of federal cash to the university. But a Goldwater honorary degree at least in that respect made some sense. Not sure if the same could be said for the recipient of the honorary degree from Long Island’s Southampton College in 1996. The academic marvel that year was a Sesame Street Muppet Kermit the Frog.

Then again maybe Kermit was more deserving than Bush since Kermit had used his celebrity to spread positive messages about environmental protection in public service announcements for the National Wildlife Federation, National Parks Service, the Better World Society, and other groups.

At least that’s what University officials said in defending Kermit’s honorary degree.”

I get it. Let’s round up everyone that ASU has given an honorary degree to since the beginning of velcro in order to see how they measure up (or down) to the “Chosen One”.

People, we really need to stop this collective mowing down of anything and everyone who those not pander to Barack Obama. Is there anyone who is as weary as me of these “I HAVE A BRACELET TOO” moments?

Don’t pick on poor little ol’ Kermit the Frog. He is of color just like Obama and deserved that honorary degree.
Oh watch out Kermit. Next you will have to defend your right to that star you received on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I heard that Obama wants one of those too.

Autographed Letter Signed,
AFROCITY