November 2000 has been a good month for the school voucher movement -- whatever the fate of the ballot initiatives in Michigan and California. The campaign has elicited a new round of pro-voucher pronouncements from prominent liberals.
Most notably, on Nov. 1, the Washington Post editorialized in favor of vouchers. And in doing so, it offered this bracing repudiation of anti-voucher hypocrisy: "Inner-city school reform has been going on for just about as long as inner-city school failure. Most voucher opponents wouldn't, and don't, tolerate such conditions for their children. . . . They choose private schools or settle in better school districts. . . . Then they argue that enterprising students left behind shouldn't be allowed similarly to escape, because it would be unfair to the rest."
The next day, lefty Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt gave vouchers a thumbs-up. Hunt concluded, "With persistently failing schools -- the target of Michigan's [Proposal] 1 -- some radical remedies have to be tried or we relegate these kids to a vicious circle from which few escape." Amen.