It's unclear exactly what Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Washington, D.C., in Congress, so dislikes about the Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides some 2,000 low-income students in the District an opportunity to receive their educations from private providers. She told the Washington Post, "We have to protect the children, who are the truly innocent victims here." But victims require victimizers, and Holmes Norton neglects to be specific. Are "the children" victims of too much educational choice? Are they victims of their parents' desire that they receive stronger educations? From whom or what, exactly, does Holmes Norton purport to protect D.C.'s low-income kids? Ah, but she's not really protecting kids, is she. Holmes Norton is protecting a public-school system that has itself victimized countless numbers of Washington, D.C., children. She should've told the Post: "I intend to destroy any challenge to the Washington, D.C., public-school monopoly, and the desires of low-income children and their parents, my constituents, be damned."
