WASHINGTON, DC - In a stunning turn of events, the Obama Administration today reversed course on the issue of school choice and vouchers, detailing an ambitious plan to create national school choice options through a competitive grant program for states.

“Unfortunately, I had not actually sat down and read the research on school choice and achievement for myself,” Obama admitted during a press conference this morning. “I trusted the counsel of those who supposedly had. I can admit when I am wrong, and in this case, I see that offering options to parents is not only changing lives, but, on a large scale, can lift our entire school system to new heights. That’s exactly what this White House is all about.”

Joined at the podium by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the President outlined their proposal to launch a competition that, like its predecessor ‘Race to the Top’, asks states to collaborate with stakeholders to win gobs of cash. Only, this time, according to Duncan, “the stakeholders will not be teachers unions and school boards, but parents and students. We screwed up last time and relied on the input of those we thought had the best interests of kids in mind. We wanted urgency. What we got was a pile of promises that have not only been sitting in limbo for over a year, but in some cases abandoned entirely.”

Duncan also revealed that no outside consultancy would be accepted to boost the chances states have to win. “For ‘Race to the Top’, my staff was reading the same application over and over again. Only the state names changed.”

To prove his point, he brought up the winning applications of Maryland and Hawaii. “Honestly, we were just flipping coins at the end,” he said.

Details of the plan are still being put in place, but Obama clearly planted his Administration’s flag in the school choice camp today, going so far as to express admiration for state leaders such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania.

“Those guys have been so right on this issue for so long, and I just didn’t see it. I’m trying to put a Beer Summit together between them, Eleanor Holmes Norton, George Miller and the NEA to get the truth about school choice out there.”

Also in the news, today is April 1st.

The issue of school choice is one that Barack Obama just can’t seem to escape.

In his adopted hometown of Washington, DC, the President has given families and lawmakers the silent treatment on the future of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program - a program that for years has allowed students to escape failing District schools and attend local private ones. Though families are over the moon with the options DCOSP has opened up to them and kids are doing better than ever in their new schools, Obama has quietly cut funding for the federally budgeted program with the stroke of a pen and denied new applicants the opportunity to enroll.

By contrast, in his true hometown of Chicago, 22,000 elementary school kids are on the verge of receiving the same hope and change now closed to DC families.

A bill that passed the Illinois Senate last month and catapulted out of the House Executive Committee (10 to 1) last week on a positive trajectory to a full vote would rescue students from the worst public schools in the Windy City through the offer of a voucher their parents could use to enroll them in the private school of their choice.

And the irony? The proposed Chicago voucher program has been championed by a former colleague of (and sometimes adviser to) the President: Democratic state Senator (Rev.) James Meeks.

Meeks joins a long line of school choice leaders who break the myth that it is a purely political issue:

“To me education is a moral issue, and we’re offering a humane answer from people of both parties and all colors who think it’s a moral tragedy to see three generations of Chicago children go without a real education.”

In an attempt to win back her crown as Miss Congeniality among anti-school-choice Democrats, Olympia Snowe (R-ME) strolled to the well of the Senate yesterday evening to stab her fellow Mainer, Sen. Susan Collins, in the back by voting against the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Ms. Collins is one of the program’s chief champions. Despite the courage demonstrated by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Bill Nelson, Mark Warner, and Joe Lieberman - who voted FOR the voucher program - Sen. Snowe’s status as the lone Republican vote against the program was anything but courageous. Whether she likes Sen. Collins or not - or whether she wants to curry favor with Democrats or not (she does), Sen. Snowe’s vote today left DC kids… snowed under.

(In another bit of Maine news, yesterday, the state legislature again denied families another form school choice when their Education Committee endorsed an “innovative schools” bill which had all references to charter school removed before moving on to the main body.)

In the only public “debate” on the Senate Floor today regarding the highly-successful DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan demonstrated that he’s worn out his welcome in Washington, DC (at least in the non-Congressional parts of town). By telling families that if they want to send their kids to private schools (and thus, get an education) - they need to pay for it and by, strangely, saying that “if North Dakota were a country”, the state’s science scores would be second in the world—he proved himself equally bizarre and out of touch.

Sen. Dorgan thinks public education is something it’s not. He remembers his own school days and thinks classrooms in DC must be reminiscent of his youth in North Dakota. How wrong he is….

The lesson was right in front of him, but perhaps Sen. Dorgan was chatting in the cloakroom with his anti-voucher buddies when a truly esteemed Senator spoke and eloquently described the true need for DC school vouchers. Perhaps he missed the oversized posters that the venerable Sen. Dianne Feinstein brought with her to the well of the Senate today - posters that depicted parents and kids who can’t, as he posited, just “pay for the tuition” themselves - but whose futures have been saved by the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Did he miss it? Or does he choose to ignore it?

So while Byron “Lost in Space” Dorgan prattled on with a strange, troubling analogy - which included the argument that the US has talented astronauts, therefore DC kids do not deserve vouchers - the only man in either chamber of Congress who has actually flown in space, real astronaut Bill Nelson (D-FL), voted in favor of the the DCOSP tonight. We suppose he’s much more grounded now than Sen. Dorgan.

All I want for Christmas is the OSP, the OSP for all like me.

Gee if I could only have the OSP, then I could wish you Merry Christmas.

It seems so long since I couldn’t read or do the math my old school said I couldn’t.

Now my teachers help me read and teach me math and writing, even English.

All I want for Christmas is my scholarship. A chance to be a brand new me.

It’s not fair that we can’t get a scholarship when Congress pays for kids to go to prison.

Why is it fine for the President to send his daughters to the nation’s finest?

Mom wants me to have the same, so I can be the first to finish college.

All I want for Christmas is the OSP, the OSP for all like me.

Gee if I could have this for the kids like me, I could wish you Merry Christmas!

For more information on protecting the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), visit Save Opportunity.