Jindal: DOJ’S Latest School-Choice Lawsuit Maneuver “Nothing More Than a PR Stunt”

The Obama Justice Department’s relentless campaign to deny low-income and often minority children the opportunity to escape failing public school systems — capriciously and malignantly conducted under the guise of “protecting civil rights” and aiding the “desegregation process” — made its latest manifestation in Louisiana in August, when the DOJ asked a federal court to stop Louisiana school districts from handing out private-school vouchers.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has been fighting the federal government’s blatantly ideological interference in his state’s education system, defending the positive program that has demonstrably bettered the opportunities and outcomes for disadvantaged children and for which parents are clamoring. Regardless of the Justice Department’s latest claims in a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner, saying the state has agreed to hand over information that the DOJ has ostensibly been requesting about the program’s effect on the racial makeup of participating schools, Jindal insists that Louisiana and the feds are no closer to a resolution on the issue. {snip}

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And Jindal is capitalizing on the opportunity by making sure everyone in Louisiana is acquainted with the Justice Department’s perversity, scooping into his campaign funds to get the message out with an ad buy that will run for the next several weeks:

The Justice Department, however, apparently remains determined in their quest to undercut Bobby Jindal’s gumption in taking on the quagmire that is the public school system and its teachers unions, which is a damn shame for the many parents trying to get their kids out of its fail factories. Clint Bolick has more at the WSJ:

As part of its efforts to boost educational opportunities for disadvantaged children, last year Louisiana enacted the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program. The statewide program provides tuition vouchers to children from families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line whose children otherwise would attend public schools that the state has graded C, D or F. This year, roughly 8,000 children are using vouchers to attend private schools. Among those, 91% are minority and 86% would have attended public schools with D or F grades. …

If successful, the Justice Department’s motion could thwart school choice — not just vouchers, but charter schools — in hundreds of districts across the country that are still subject to desegregation decrees. And it would deprive thousands of Louisiana schoolchildren, nearly all of them black, of the only high-quality educational opportunities they have ever had.

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