by Betsy McCaughey in the New York Post
Trapping kids in schools where almost no learning occurs is an atrocious moral failing — one that last week President Trump took a step toward correcting: He declared that every child deserves a good education, regardless of their zip code.
That’s a sign of hope for thousands of kids all across New York state who are forced to attend neighborhood public schools that are failure factories.
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Ideally, New Yorkers across the state would vote out union-toady legislators, demand an end to the cap on charter schools and give kids caged in failing schools an exit ramp.
Don’t hold your breath. Political courage is in short supply in our state.
The good news is that Trump’s Thursday executive order backed education freedom nationwide.
It mandates federal departments to use their discretionary funds and authority to expand charters and school choice, and calls on Congress to enact tax credits and other funding mechanisms that would help parents in every state pay for private and parochial school options.
Trump has promised to sign the Educational Choice for Children Act, which was introduced in Congress last week and is likely to pass both houses.
The bill offers $10 billion in federal tax incentives for donors to support existing and new K-12 scholarship programs, and is supported by the Black Mothers Forum, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and others.
By funding school choice at the federal level, Trump’s initiatives aim to do an end-run around blue-state obstruction — finally offering hope for kids imprisoned in New York state’s worst public schools.
Free at last.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
Read the full article in the New York Post
Photo: Fourth-grade students working together by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages, with CC BY-NC 2.0 license on Flickr