Obama Girls to Enroll at Sidwell Friends

An Exercise of School Choice

Barack and Michelle Obama have decided to send their daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, to the Sidwell Friends School, an elite and very expensive private school in Washington D.C.

The Obamas' choice of Sidwell Friends for their daughters is a rational choice for parents of means—tuition is close to thirty thousand dollars a year—but politically dubious. Sidwell Friends has been educating the children of the Washington elite for decades; Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia went there, as did Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea. Sidwell Friends is well experienced in the accommodation of the security needs

And, of course, it would be madness for any parents of means to actually send their children to a public school. While Washington D.C. public schools have improved under the reform minded D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee, they cannot compare to Sidwell Friends in the quality of education provided.

However, by exercising a rational judgment as parents, Barack and Michelle Obama leave themselves open to criticisms of hypocrisy as politicians. The Obama's have been quite loquacious in their support of the public school system and in their opposition to school choice programs. Incidentally Chancellor Michelle Rhee is a warm supporter of Washington D.C. pilot school choice program, now under threat of cancellation by the Democratic Congress.

The Obamas are not alone in exercising their preference for private schools for their children while vigorously denying that choice to parents of lesser means. A Heritage Foundation study tells an interesting tale about members of Congress:

"In 2007, The Heritage Foundation updated this survey and found that 37 percent of Representatives and 45 percent of Senators in the 110th Congress sent their children to private schools—almost four times the rate of the general population.

"Based on the survey results, if all of the Members who exercised school choice for their own children had supported school choice in policy, every major legislative effort in recent years to give parents school choice would have passed."