In his column this week, John Stossel discusses the teachers union’s attacks on school choice groups.  In Washington state the teachers union derides a non-profit organization and accuses it of using “bundles of cash” to promote their agenda.  That very union spends eight times more money on politics than the Democratic and Republican parties in that state combined, which hardly puts them in the position to be able to accuse anyone of using “bundles of cash” to promote an agenda.

Stossel also has these uplifting stories from the frontlines of our government schools, you know, the ones that the teachers unions think you should be forced to attend based solely on your address.

In San Antonio, Texas, Jim and Cecilia Leininger have spent $10 million of their own money to give private-school scholarships to 8,000 students who were struggling in government schools.

At a meeting of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Jim said, “We hadn’t had this program going for one month, and the principal of a school in San Antonio called us and said, ‘I’ve got two black kids in my school that are identical twins. They’ve just entered the sixth grade. They’re 11 years old. They’re good kids. They’re good students. They don’t want to be in a gang. The gang is after them. And if you don’t give them a scholarship on an emergency basis, they’re going to get killed.’”

The horror stories went on and on. “We had one little girl who was told the very first day she got to middle school that at 11 years old, she was too pretty to be a virgin,” Leininger said. “These guys tried to rape her right in the classroom at the end of the day. Purely by God’s grace, the teacher came back into the room and started screaming just before this little girl was violated.

“A little blond first-grade girl was going to a school on the far west side of San Antonio. Nine older boys sharpened pencils and ran in circles around her, stabbing her with these pencils. She was stabbed 39 times.

“One mom we talked to, her child was hiding in the closet, kicking and screaming, afraid to go to school. He’d just entered the sixth grade, just met the gang. She was crying when she called us and said, ‘I can’t send him back there where the gangs are after him, but what can I do?’”

Leininger gave her and the other desperate children “emergency scholarships.”

I wonder how many kids have similar stories, but aren’t fortunate enough to have deep pocketed benefactors to lift them out of a bad situation?

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This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.