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Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Drawing a fine line

Mary Landrieu distinguishes herself from Bobby Jindal this way.

Like Jindal she's perfectly fine with treating teachers like dirt. And like Jindal she supports Jindal's catastrophic voucher program which proposes to subsidize private school tuition without subjecting those schools to the same quality standards applied to the public institutions the vouchers will undercut.

But there's a crucial difference between Landrieu and the man who could be her opponent in the 2014 election.*
One part of Jindal's plan proposes making vouchers available to students in public schools that are graded C, D or F and where the family's income level does not exceed 250 percent of the federal poverty level.

Landrieu said that would mean that 378,000 students would be eligible, many more than the available slots available in private and parochial schools. Jindal's education allies in the Legislature said the vouchers make up a small part of the program.

Landrieu said Jindal should look at a more "strategic use of vouchers," possibly using them to help those in the worst schools get out.


What this means is unlike Jindal, who is certainly aware of these numbers, Landrieu actually pretends to take the claim that this is a sincere attempt to improve educational opportunities for Louisiana's schoolchildren seriously.

And so your choice is between a huckster and his enabler. It's up to you to decide which of those is actually worse.

*I should note this story would suggest that the rumors of a Jindal-for-Senate campaign have become more remote lately.

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