Earlier this year, tucked in the massive stimulus bill, was a sop to the teachers union in Washington, D.C. The bill effectively killed the D.C. opportunity scholarships that gave a few lucky poor children an out from D.C.'s atrocious public school system.

I'm not a proponent of taxpayer-funded vouchers for kids generally. I think the public school system largely has a socializing effect and provides a common cultural and civic background for most Americans. However, that tendency on my part is not absolute. And it does not apply to areas where the public schools are so broken -- like Washington, D.C. -- that little to no education is really offered to the students.

I mentioned at the time Education Secretary Arne Duncan was nominated that I found it odd that President Barack Obama would select the guy in charge of the Chicago public school system to head the Education Department when he hadn't done a good enough job in Chicago to earn Obama's trust to educate his own two girls.

Well, the reason why is that Duncan isn't a leader, he's an Democratic Party man, as the Denver Post's David Harsanyi demonstrates:

Then the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported that the Department of Education had buried a study that illustrated unquestionable and pervasive improvement among kids who won vouchers, compared to the kids who didn't. Not only was the report disregarded, the Department of Education issued a gag order on any discussion about it.

Is this what Duncan meant by following the evidence?

When I had the chance to ask Duncan — at a meeting of the Denver Post editorial board on Tuesday — whether he was alerted to this study before Congress eradicated the D.C. program, he offered an unequivocal "no." He then called the WSJ editorial "fundamentally dishonest" and maintained that no one had even tried to contact him, despite the newspaper's contention that it did, repeatedly.

When I called the Wall Street Journal, I discovered a different — that is, meticulously sourced and exceedingly convincing — story, including documented e-mail conversations between the author and higher-ups in Duncan's office. The voucher study — which showed progress compounding yearly — had been around since November and its existence is mandated by law. So at best, Duncan was willfully ignorant.

But the most "fundamentally dishonest" aspect of the affair was Duncan's feeble argument against the program. First, he strongly intimated that since only 1 percent of children were able to "escape" (and, boy, that's some admission) from D.C. public schools through this program, it was not worth saving.

So, you may ask, why not allow the 1 percent to turn into 2 percent or 10 percent, instead of scrapping the program? After all, only moments earlier, Duncan claimed that there was no magic reform bullet and it would take a multitude of innovations to fix education.

Then, Duncan, after thrashing the scholarship program and study, emphasized that he was opposed to "pulling kids out of a program" in which they were "learning." Geez. If they're learning in this program, why kill it? And if the program was insignificant, as Duncan claimed, why keep these kids in it? Are these students worse off? Or are they just inconveniencing the rich kids?

Duncan can't be honest, of course. Not when it's about politics and paybacks to unions who are about as interested in reforming education as teenagers are in calculus.

Duncan has betrayed principle to be President Obama's man -- and damn the children.

And just imagine the outrage and the stories in the mainstream press if the details were reversed and a study had found vouchers weren't working and the Education Dept. buried that story and continued to fund them.