Mainly because the Democratic Party is so closely tied to teacher unions but there’s more to the story.

David Will of the Princeton Tory writes.

School Choice and Individual Liberty

In early 2009, one of President Obama’s first acts in office was to end the DC school voucher program. He even sought to revoke scholarships that had already been promised to children for the coming term. The children who benefitted from the program were mostly of African American descent, a constituency Obama carried by 96% in 2008. The voucher recipients’ parents likely voted for the President, trusting him with looking out for their families. What’s worse, two of the voucher recipients set to lose their scholarships attended Sidwell Friends, the same school where Obama’s children are enrolled. Ever since taking office, President Obama has maintained a pernicious fixation on rooting out school choice programs.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have instituted voucher programs. Voucher programs allow students from low-income families to escape failing schools. Parents who qualify may send their child to a private school or, in some cases, a better-performing public school in another district. The state either directly provides tax dollars or facilitates the distribution of private funds in order to cover tuition. A lottery system is used in all of the voucher programs to determine which children are selected.

Louisiana is the latest frontier in the fight for school choice. A student is eligible for the state’s program if his or her family lives at 250% or less of the poverty line, and he or she attends a failing school. The program has initially proven to be wildly popular and successful. Ninety-three percent of parents whose children receive vouchers approve of the law. That’s no surprise, given that, from 2011 to 2013 alone, there was a seven percent increase in math and literacy performance among voucher recipients. And it is reasonable to believe that those results will only improve as the program expands.

In August, the Justice Department abruptly intervened to halt the Louisiana Scholarship Program, the state’s voucher initiative, on the grounds that it exacerbates segregation in public schools. As students leave certain schools and migrate to others, the logic goes, the racial make-up at each end is changed.