The latest right wing meme: What school for Obama’s children?

If one conservative pundit writes a column about the hypocrisy of Obama sending his kids to private school, it's just a column. When the next day another conservative pundit writes that, to be consistent, Obama should send his kids to public school, we're seeing the creation of a new talking point from the school voucher advocates.

Watch soon for a longer post about The Vast Right Wing Educational Conspiracy. Right now, let's address this specific issue directly.

The basic concept is, the Obamas are hypocrites for sending their kids to private schools while they say they're against vouchers. Why is it OK for these Democratic elitists to want the best education for their kids but insist that other children don't have the same option?

The argument breaks down pretty quickly if it's taken beyond the sound-bite level. The Obamas are looking at three private schools. Their yearly tuitions range from $25,000 to $30,000. And that's based on serving children who have every advantage at home and probably don't need the special services that cost public schools so much money. If these schools were to accept a random sample of D.C. public school students, they would have to add $5-10,000 to their tuition.

Anyone want to figure out how much it would cost to supply vouchers to those schools for anyone who wants them? Tell me, conservatives, do you want to raise taxes to cover the bill?

Add to that the simple fact that there aren't many private schools, and of those, something like 70% of them are religious schools. (Conservatives don't talk much about the fact that they want tax dollars to fund religious education, but that's one of their goals.) The funny thing is, students at religious private schools do no better on standardized tests than the equivalent public school students. In fact, one category of private school does worse than public schools: fundamentalist Christian schools.

So simply sending public school students to various private schools, even assuming there could ever be a supply to match the demand, doesn't solve the problems of improving educational quality.

But this doesn't directly address the central question: why should the Obamas send their kids to private schools when they say they support public education?

Here's the closest analogy I can come up with. Imagine you're a legislator — or the President — who believes in making public hospitals as good as they can possibly be. You've devoted your life to improving their funding and the quality of doctors who work there, with some, but not much, success. Then your child gets seriously ill. Would anyone seriously expect you to take your child to a public hospital where that child may get inferior care rather than the best private hospital you can find?

Of course you want those public hospitals to be better than they are, but at the same time, you're going to do what's best for your own children.

I certainly hope President Obama will work hard to improve public education, including increasing the quantity and quality of pre-K education and working to make charter schools increasingly viable. But asking him to put his children into one of the troubled D.C. schools to demonstrate his devotion to public education is ridiculous.

Expect to hear this right wing red herring for the next four years.