Politicians are generally despicable people, but the worst of the worst almost certainly would include the ones who oppose school choice in order to curry favor with teacher unions.
Like Joe Biden, for instance.
But if you want the worst of the worst of the worst, then we need to look at politicians who oppose school choice while having their own kids in private schools.
In other words, they are hypocrites who also support horrible education policy.
Like Elizabeth Warren, for instance.
Today, we’re going to highlight one of these reprehensible people.
In a column for the Washington Free Beacon, Chuck Ross writes about a Pennsylvania Senate candidate who wants poor kids to be stuck in sub-par schools, but has his own kids at a fancy private school.
Pennsylvania Senate hopeful John Fetterman (D.) opposes vouchers that let children in failing public school districts attend private and charter schools. But the progressive champion…sends his kids to an elite prep school. Fetterman’s kids attend the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, where parents pay up to $34,250… Fetterman and his wife Gisele have sent at least one of their three kids to Winchester Thurston for the past seven years. …Fetterman’s embrace of school choice for his own family opens him up to allegations of hypocrisy on several fronts. …Fetterman has publicly opposed vouchers that parents in poor-performing districts like his own could use to send their kids to private and charter schools. In 2018, he told an organization founded by Bernie Sanders supporters he opposed vouchers for families.
Some people are criticizing Fetterman’s hpocrisy, though I would have said something much stronger than “shame on him.”
“Shame on him,” said David P. Hardy, a distinguished senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation and co-founder of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia charter school. “Fetterman could send his kids to [Woodland Hills], but he’s got money, so he can send them somewhere else,” Hardy told the Washington Free Beacon. “But the poor people there are stuck going to those schools, and he doesn’t give them any way out.”
It’s hardly a suprise that politicians often are hypocrites.
That’s true with regard to taxes. And that’s true with regards to the pandemic.
But it’s nauseating when they’re hypocrites on school choice since they are denying kids a chance for a better life by trapping them in failing government schools.
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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.
