By killing a charter school expansion last week, the state Legislature blew New York's shot at $700 million in federal aid and denied thousands of parents the ability to choose better schools for their kids.
One and all, the lawmakers claimed to be keeping faith with traditional public schools. Oh, really? So why did so many of them get their educations elsewhere?
The Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability conducted an eye-opening survey, asking all 208 sitting members of the Legislature about their educational backgrounds.
Of the 138 who answered, 49% benefited from school choice in their own lives - receiving at least part of their K-12 education in private institutions or in the city's elite high schools.
That includes 52% of the Senate Democrats and 46% of the Assembly Democrats who responded - the very group whose collective inaction doomed a plan to open hundreds more charters across the city and state.
Even the top charter enemy - Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver - is a product of private religious schools.
Thousands of New York families would love to give their children the same advantages that Silver and the pols got. They would love to yank their kids out of failing public schools and put them in schools that work. But they can't afford tuition, so they and their kids are trapped.