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When Secretary Spellings announced a few weeks ago that NCLB hasn’t provided nearly enough school choice, no one should have been surprised.

Since day one, it’s been no secret that in the districts where parents need choice the most, it’s been offered the least. Chicago, for instance, made stonewalling on choice into an art form in the law’s first year, chiseling down the number of children eligible for transfers from 125,000 to 2,407, and in the end letting only 1,165 move schools. In Detroit, it wasn’t until March 2004 that the school district announced that it had finally figured out its choice plan – for the 2003-04 school year. And this year, the Alliance for School Choice and the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education launched a suit against the Los Angeles and Compton Unified school districts for restraining choice; in woeful Compton no child has ever received a transfer to a better school.

This was completely predictable. Who would really have thought that a federal law, assembled by a “bipartisan” team, would have had any kind of meaningful choice? Were politicians really going to throw special interest groups like the NEA, AFT, and NSBA under the proverbial school bus by giving parents some control over their children’s education? Hardly!

Parents just don’t have the political power they need to influence Washington the way entrenched special interests – who owe their livelihoods to captive children and taxpayers – do. Heck, the NEA has been chartered by Congress and owns its own huge headquarters in Washington, where every day 600 people work to expand the union’s intake of children and money.

The wise men who crafted America’s Constitution knew that if power were concentrated in the national government the politically adroit would abuse it and squash liberty. That’s why the Constitution gives the federal government control over only a very limited list of areas – among which you will not find education – and leaves authority over all others to the states and people. Too bad we’ve been ignoring the Constitution for decades.

Ultimately, if parents want to have real choice, it cannot come from Washington, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of education special interests. No, it’s going to have to be taken at the local and state level by parents demanding their right to choose and refusing to vote for anyone who would deny it.

Neal McCluskey is a policy analyst with Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom.