Will 2010 Be a Landmark Year for Education Reform?

Lindsey Burke / March 02, 2010

While China rings in 2010 as the year of the tiger, American families and taxpayers might soon be able to refer to 2010 as the year school choice became the norm. Five states in particular are worth watching: Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Virginia and New Jersey.

Ironically perhaps, Illinois is home to the most notable opponents of school choice in D.C. – Senator Durbin, the chief architect of the plan to eliminate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan who exercised school choice by purchasing a home in northern Virginia where the schools – unlike those in the District – are acceptable, but who opposes school choice for low-income students in that same District, and President Obama, himself a scholarship recipient as a child and who has enrolled his two children in the poshest private school in D.C. Yet in Illinois, a robust voucher initiative has been introduced by an unlikely champion: the Rev. James Meeks, a Democratic state senator. Bill McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal:

James T. Meeks does not fit the usual stereotype of a voucher advocate. To begin with, he is founder and senior pastor of Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, the largest African-American church in Illinois. He serves as executive vice-president for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Oh, yes: He is a Democratic state senator who chairs both his chamber’s education committee and the legislature’s Black Caucus. (more…)