The education speech Obama should have given

If he wants to make a difference to minority children (although why he wants them to succeed isn't clear--is it to volunteer? To become a government bureaucrat? To become a social worker and visit people receiving welfare? He definitely doesn't want them to be rich) he needs to talk to their parents, the NEA, the Department of Education and Congress about school choice and supporting home schoolers. Particularly, the parents in DC need to hear this message. Obama and other minority government officials and civil servants send their children to tony private schools that need minorities for "balance" and government grants. Not everyone can afford the school where the Obama girls go or where Jesse Jackson and Al Gore sent their kids, but vouchers do work and its been proven to be very helpful, especially for minority children who most need to escape the prison of the public system. There is a bigger gap now than 20 years ago between minorities and whites. Part of this is, I'm sure (if they are measuring public schools and not all schools), the better students have been pulled out by their parents, or the parents have fled to the suburbs to avoid forced bussing leaving the city schools to struggle with minorities, mix and match quasi-families, immigrants, and special needs students.

". . . students at inner-city [NY] Catholic high schools, who are mostly minorities, achieve nearly 90 percent graduation rates," and these schools could be saved with an adequate voucher program according to the City Journal article. Cleveland would be thrilled with figures half of that. The disabled also get a better chance with the voucher system, and indirectly it prevents the public schools from funneling children into special programs in order to get government money which isn't used on the children with problems.