[American Thinker] When in doubt, cry racism. It’s the left’s go-to weapon when the facts are against them. School choice advocates, then, should be heartened: Progressives lately have had to stoop low, get dirty, and hurl mudballs in our direction, because that’s all they’ve got.
This month progressives let fly three separate volleys, hoping the "racist" argument would somehow find its mark. The New York Times, the Center for American Progress, and the American Federation of Teachers all argued that educational choice is "racist," rooted in "slavery," and a cover for "segregation." (One commentator also blames "anti-Catholic sentiment and a particular form of Christian fundamentalism.") Worse, they declare authoritatively, "choice" will spell the end of democracy, as we know it.
First came the Center for American Progress. Their report, "The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers" (July 12, 2017), chains current voucher proposals to segregationist policies of the past, concluding that vouchers are "fundamentally positioned to funnel taxpayers’ dollars into private schools while draining much-needed resources from public schools and ... vulnerable students."
A week later, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "a public school denier, denying the good in our public schools and their foundational place in our democracy." Weingarten described "vouchers, for-profit charters and other privatization schemes" as the "polite cousins of segregation," part of a scheme to "protect the economic and political power of the few against the rights of the many." She accuses proponents of educational choice of trying "to starve public schools to the breaking point ... and let the market handle the rest." And that, she declared ominously, is "how a democracy comes apart." 
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