February 20, 2012
Education advocates cried foul after the Obama administration this month revealed its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2013 -- one that cancels all federal funding for a popular school choice program in D.C. and abstinence education programs nationwide, WORLD News Service reports. Since 2003, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has given low-income children the opportunity to escape failing public schools in order to attend the private school of their parents' choice. The nation's first federally funded school choice program, it boasts a 91 percent high school graduation rate, compared to only 70 percent citywide among children with similar backgrounds. Meanwhile, the president took a 20:1 funding disparity between condom-based sex education programs and abstinence education programs and made it 100:0. "Why would the president want to censor information that helps teens make healthy choices?" said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. "It just doesn't make sense!" Virginia Walden Ford, former executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, said Obama had "chosen to stand with special interest groups and not with the children who need him to stand for them."
