An explanation of school choice and its variants
By Dan Spencer
Watchdog.org
January 29th, 2015
It’s National School Choice Week. School choice is all about public policy enabling families stuck with low-performing schools to being able to choose to attend higher-performing public and private schools. School choice encourages healthy competition among schools to better serve students. Parents are allowed to use the public funds set aside for their children’s education to choose schools that work best for them.
School choice includes things like charter schools, home schooling, and school vouchers:
- Charter schools are public schools that are given independence from some local or even state rules. They are financed through public funds. Charter schools are open to any child, and if enrollment exceeds available space, charter schools accept students by random, public lottery. More than 2.5 million students now attend nearly 6,500 charter schools.
- Some parents choose to home school their children instead of sending them to a traditional public or private school. Home schooling is legal in all 50 states. It is estimated that more than 1.5 million children are being home schooled in the U.S.
- Vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and personal tax credits allow parents to use public funds to pay for some or all of their child’s private school tuition. The Center for Education Reform reports that there are 21 school voucher programs in 18 states plus the District of Columbia.
All these choices provide families with alternatives when a traditional school fails to adequately meet their student’s needs.
Study after study has found that school choice increases graduation rates and student achievement. Education is the gateway to a better future. School choice is seen “the surest way” to end the cycle of poverty, as a way to expand opportunity, and a means to end the school-to-prison and welfare pipeline.
Why aren’t these alternatives to traditional public schools available to all children? Imagine how different things might be if school choice was universal.
