The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program -- and with it perhaps the Parker children's hopes for a Sidwell diploma.

Known as the "Durbin language" after the Illinois Democrat who came up with
it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia
approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the
program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that's so
handy when you don't want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are
cutting one of their lifelines.

Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. "I once
took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security
guards," she says. "I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at
Sidwell." It's not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores,
fewer than half of Roosevelt's students are proficient in reading or
math.

That's the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students
face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the
most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our
loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people's children --
mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos -- trapped in schools where they'd never
let their own kids set foot.