July 14, 2008 10:23AM # Barack Obama Walks the Walk By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE After telling a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers that he opposes school voucher programs over the weekend, [Senator Obama added that: ](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/obamas_remarks_to_the_american.html)“We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.” Senator Obama sends his own two daughters to [the private “Lab School” ](http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/academics/ms/handbook/3.shtml)founded by John Dewey in 1896, [which charged $20,000 in tuition ](http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/operations/registrar/tuition.shtml)at the middle school level last year. Though he says “we” should not be “throwing up our hands and walking away” from public schools, he has done precisely that. That is his right, and, as a wealthy man, it is his prerogative under the current system of American education, which allows only the wealthy to easily choose between private and government schools. But instead of offering to extend that same choice to all families, Senator Obama wants the poor to wait for the public school system to be “fixed.” I could editorialize about this, but I really don’t see the need. Readers of this blog are perfectly capable of drawing the obvious conclusions. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).