Senator Durbin used Wednesday’s hearing on Washington, DC public schools to broadcast what feels like a last ditch effort on his part to remove continuation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program from consideration, and frankly, making thinly veiled accusations of mismanagement and fraud when he himself admits to lacking all of the details speaks of desperation.

While there may be a legitimate question of the program’s transparency, if that truly is an obstacle to continuation, it is one that can easily be removed. What cannot be questioned is the fact that DC OSP families have seen the education and futures of their students dramatically changed for the better because of their participation.

Perhaps the most scrutinized and vetted federal education reform program in history, mountains of research and hours of testimony before Congress by experts, educators, parents and students should speak for itself, pointing to increased student achievement, safety and satisfaction.

This small $14 million program has proven itself to be effective on many levels, and yet billions upon billions are heaped into pork legislation, pet projects and favors without so much as a raised eyebrow? This year, public schools across the country have been the recipients of the largest influx of monies ever allotted to education. Rather than fighting what works, Senator Durbin and his teachers union supporters would better serve the kids he so strongly “defends” in his war on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program by thoroughly following the $100 billion pledged to the country’s schools and ensuring that it not continue to fund failing and broken programs.

Save Opportunity

Copyright: Doug Stroud www.lttlphotography.co

Baseball may appear to have a very incongruous relationship to the topic of education reform, but it appeared, at least on August 19, on a muggy evening in Washington, to have more in common with kids most in need of schools than any other piece of popular culture.

Washington, DC was for years without a team.

Children in DC for years were without any access to schools that work.

Baseball used to be a huge phenomenon in Washington.

Many schools used to be phenomenal here as well.

Dunbar High School was a college prep school with a very high percentage of graduates. But at last night’s Nationals game, at least two parents of children who participate in a program of choice said there was no way they’d send their daughters to that school - a school that is now a symbol of miseducation for all but the most motivated and hardened students.

Indeed, programs like the one that allowed these parents and 2,000 others to choose alternatives to their assigned public schools - schools like St. Augustine, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Archbishop Carroll - are giving parents what baseball here, even with its warts, is giving the community. Hope, dreams, and a chance to redevelop their lives.

As the Nats closed in on the Rockies last night, twice (before losing with a close 5-4), hundreds of students attending schools of opportunity cheered on their ailing team, happy to be in a stadium that has helped transform a once-desolate neighborhood, happy to be with others who have also had a second chance at an education.

While they are not winning yet, baseball has helped save this city. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is doing the same, but unlike baseball which rests mostly in private sector hands, school choices for DC students rest in government hands - Congress mostly - which has chosen thus far to deny them any more access to their own field of dreams, their chance for a way up, their way to come from behind.

They can still pull out a bottom of the 9th win for these kids when they return from recess. We can hope.

(To learn more about School Opportunity Night, please visit: www.saveopportunity.org)

Like a C-SPAN junkie throwing a shoe at the TV to thwart a clueless Washington Journal guest, a supporter of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program can at times feel like a solitary soldier in the face of the bureaucratic juggernaut that is Capitol Hill.

There have been hearings, reports, letters, editorials, parent and student testimony, rallies…

And yet, Congress and the Administration continue to fret over the effectiveness of DC’s voucher program, laboring (or not) to find an answer even as it stares them right in the face.

Okay, perhaps not the President, but at least Members of Congress get out into the real world and rub shoulders with the residents of their transitory home.

Do they realize that 74% of the folks passing them in the street each day support a continuation of DC OSP?

A new report out today from the Friedman Foundation cuts past the politicos and gets right to the heart of the matter: how District residents - beneficiaries of this and other reforms - feel about their schools, their school leaders and the choices they have for their children.

Their desire to to see the program survive this prolonged vetting is reinforced by groups such as Save Opportunity and DC Children First that work one-on-one with DC families on a daily basis in an effort to enlighten elected officials to the reality of the program’s success.

This is a wake-up call that needs to be delivered to every elected representative with a vote to cast.

It looks like RNC Chariman Michael Steele beat us to the punch and hit one out of the park for DC kids on last night’s Hardball when he pointed out the disconnect between President Obama’s incredible speech to the NAACP and his near sweeping under the rug of the successful DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.

“You can go to the NAACP and say a lot, but it’s what you do (that matters),” countered Steele when Matthews praised the hardball words of Obama in New York.

Chris Matthews was right on target with the issue, said it was an area he and Steele agreed upon, that “Opportunity Scholarships should be maintained”, and pointed out it was the education Sonia Sotomayor received at Cardinal Spellman High School, a Catholic school in the Bronx, that was a key factor in her success.

Chris Matthews and Michael Steele join a growing list of powerful endorsements for scholarships providing a way out - and a way up - for DC students.

How many more need to speak out before the Administration and Congress listen?

Take a look for yourself (discussion of DCOSP begins at the 6:45 mark).

Dear Dennis,

You have been working overtime to ensure a permanent end to the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, a program offering 1,700 children in Washington, DC a chance to escape their failing schools and receive a world-class education. Your staff has visited Congress, written letters and threatened future political support. You have ignored the tangible success of the program. Why? How do the choices of 1,700 students undermine what education is supposed to do for kids in the U.S.?

Ed Reform