National School Choice Week: School Choice Means Options

Rachel Sheffield / January 25, 2011

It’s National School Choice Week, and school choice advocates across the country are coming together to promote educational opportunity for the nation’s children.

But just what is “school choice,” and why is it so important?

School choice takes a variety of forms: private school choice, pubic school choice, charter schools, virtual education, homeschooling, or a combination of methods. Perhaps more importantly however, is that for children—from rural towns to inner cities—school choice means a greater opportunity for academic success in a nation where public education is too often failing to meet the call.

For example, private school choice—often provided in the form of a scholarship (voucher)—means that low-income students in Washington, D.C., have the opportunity to leave underperforming and dangerous public schools via the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. For families of special-needs students in Georgia, it means that parents can choose schools that will best help their children excel via the Georgia Tax Credit Scholarship Program. (more…)