Well, obviously pro-marriage policies will help – encouraging people to get married before they have children, then sticking together to raise the children. That will help.

Economist Stephen Moore has another idea, which I support.

He writes about it at the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

The scenes of Baltimore set ablaze have many Americans thinking: What can be done to rescue families trapped in an inner-city culture of violence, despair and joblessness?

There are no easy answers, but down the road from Baltimore in Washington, D.C., an education program is giving children in poor neighborhoods a big lift up.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which George W. Bush signed into law in 2004, has so far funded private school tuition for nearly 5,000 students, 95 percent of whom are African-American. They attend religious schools, music and arts schools, even elite college-prep schools. Last month at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, I met with about 20 parents and children who participate in the program. I also visited several of these families in their homes—which are located in some of the most beaten-down neighborhoods in the city, places that in many ways resemble the trouble spots in Baltimore.

These families have now pulled together to brace for a David vs. Goliath fight to save the program. For the seventh straight year, President Obama has proposed eliminating this relatively tiny scholarship fund, which at $20 million accounts for a microscopic 0.0005 percent of the $4 trillion federal budget.

Why would Obama want to end the program? Because if children can choose schools that don’t fail them, the teachers are the failing schools might lose their jobs. Since Obama needs the votes and the political support of the teacher unions, he cannot put the interests of the children above the interests of the unionized teachers.

More from the article:

An Education Department-funded study at the University of Arkansas recently found that graduation rates rose 21 percentage points—to 91 percent, from 70 percent—for students awarded the scholarship vouchers through a lottery, compared with a control group of those who applied for but didn’t get the scholarships. For all D.C. public schools, the high school graduation rate is closer to an abysmal 56 percent.

“If you’ve got a program that’s clearly working and helping these kids, why end it?” asks Pamela Battle, whose son Carlos received a voucher and was able to attend the elite Georgetown Day School. He’s now at Northeastern University in Boston. She says Carlos “almost surely wouldn’t have gone to college” without the voucher. “We send all this money overseas for foreign aid,” she adds, “why not save the kids here at home first?”

Well, as I said, the Democrats don’t like the law:

Amazingly, these energized parents are opposed by almost every liberal group, even the NAACP, and nearly every Democrat in Congress—including Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia in Congress but opposes a program that benefits her own constituents.

There is little question what stirs this opposition. The teachers union sees the program as taking away union jobs, and it is so powerful that the Democratic establishment falls in line. “It is so sad that our public schools aren’t doing what’s best for the kids,” laments Ford, but instead are looking out for “the adults.”

[…]Obama won’t even meet with these parents. A few years ago the voucher supporters held a rally with 3,000 minority and disadvantaged families in front of the Capitol to protest President Obama’s proposed elimination of the program for all new students. Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker John Boehner, one of the program’s strongest supporters, stood in solidarity with the families, while Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues were nowhere to be seen.

So, the next time someone accuses conservatives of not caring about children, be sure and tell them the story of the D.C. voucher program. We conservatives are very much in favor of helping poor children. It’s the people on the left who are not. Don’t let your conversations with leftists be about vague things like racism and “the rich”. Bring it down to the level of details – “I support voucher programs for poor children to get out of failing schools. Do you? Why don’t your Democrat leaders support them?” Go on the attack with the facts.

By the way, read the whole post by Moore – it’s chock full of parents giving their opinion about the program, and telling stories of how vouchers worked for them. Children first, adults second. That has to be our rule.