Blogs For Victory

What you get when conservatism is at the helm:

In a major legislative success for Gov. Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Senate voted 25 to 12 on Wednesday for a bill that would let up to 1,500 low- to middle-income students in New Orleans attend private schools at taxpayer expense.

Already approved by the House, the bill, a $10 million school voucher measure, needs one more routine vote in that body on the Senate language changes before it goes to Mr. Jindal, a Republican, for signing.

Backers say the bill will help some New Orleans children escape a struggling school system that has for years been known for corruption, bad management and poor student performance.

The public school systems don’t work – and in fact, for the most part, they never can work…given the nature of humanity, trying to figure out what is best for millions of kids from a huge variety of backgrounds is impossible. The best we can do is allow parents the flexibility to choose what education they think best for their own children – and school choice is the sharp edge of this new education paradigm which will return to families their power to educate their children.

More and more I come to the conclusion that the strongest indicator of impending failure is how big the proposal is – the more anyone tries to do, the more likely they’ll get it wrong. Keep it small; keep the decision making down on the lowest level possible – do that, and even if there is a monumental screw up, then it will at least affect a smaller number of people. Right now, a few school board dimwits can wreck things for hundreds of thousands of kids at a stroke – a private school can, at most, mess up the lives of a few hundred kids. Additionally, when you put the choice down at the lower level, you’re more likely to get a decision driven by genuine knowledge of what is needed – here in Las Vegas, we have a school board which proposes to figure out what a kid in Summerlin (the rich area) and a kid off Fremont Street (the poor area) needs. It can’t be done. The parents of the Summerlin and Fremont kids, however, likely do know what is needed – as would someone running a private school in each area.

And, now, as an aside – this is yet another major accomplishment which pretty much outweighs all of what Obama has done in his lifetime…given this, I’ll once again offer my prayer that John McCain will look towards Louisiana for a Vice President.