In his recent Lexington Herald-Leader op-ed, Dr. Cameron S. Schaeffer offers a litany of actions by big-government progressives and their unintended consequences on minorities from low-income homes and neighborhoods.

Schaeffer writes: “Progressives run the public school systems in this country. At every turn they block school choice, the best chance a poor black kid has to get ahead.”

It’s certainly true in Kentucky, where failing schools disproportionately affect our most at-risk students.

Yet too many of our legislature’s black leaders – including House Education Committee chairman Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort – are the very ones standing in the way of allowing parents in poor, minority communities across the commonwealth the opportunity to choose a better education for their children.

That’s why the Bluegrass Institute has launched its “Legalize School Choice” campaign to move the school-choice ball down Kentucky’s field.

We are distributing fliers in Kentucky neighborhoods with failing schools, which ask parents to contact their elected officials and ask Graham quit preventing a vote on charter schools in the House Education Committee, which also denies all parents in the Bluegrass State the kind of school-choice option available to families in 42 other states and the nation’s capital.

Fifty-four percent of children enrolled in charter schools are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. Many of them are getting ahead in places where opponents of school choice have lost the battle, thus confirming Dr. Schaeffer's assertion.