parents

How much proof of its effectiveness does school choice need to show before it finally takes hold?

Winter has officially come, and children across the country will spend the next few months stuck in classrooms, gazing longingly out the window while they eagerly wait for spring break.

In April 2015, Nevada implemented the nation’s first universal education savings account (ESA) program, which is designed to allow parents to use some or all of the funding that would go toward their child’s traditional public education on things such as private school tuition, textbooks, and tutoring.

On July 4, 1776, American colonists declared their independence from a distant monarchy in Great Britain that had passed mandate after mandate without input from the people over which it ruled. Today, lawmakers and bureaucrats in Washington, DC and state capitals across the country pass mandates local schools hundreds or even thousands of miles away must obey or else face severe budget cuts.

The first week in May is National Charter Schools Week, a time to celebrate the advancements made in the charter school movement over the past 25 years. Because of the nation’s hundreds of new and developing charter schools, thousands of parents and their children now have the opportunity to enroll in a school that better meets children’s specific education needs.

Judging from numerous reports in print and online, a home-school co-op consists of parents bringing kids together and sharing their strongest academic specialties once a week. Field trips, clubs or other social activities for the kids sometimes follow the classes.

Uncle Sam is becoming “Uncle Shrink” to millions of schoolchildren, including many preschoolers, who are now subject to various psychology-focused educational components that have been implanted in federal education legislation over the past decade.

Supporters of education reform who advocate for government-funded choice mechanisms, such as vouchers, tend to argue the problems in K–12 schools in the United States are primarily economic matters, not pedagogical. This view is validated by much data, but the concept ought to be extended further to say the economic marketplace in which K–12 education operates needs more than vouchers to become as efficient as it needs to be to deliver a quality education to each and every child.

Parents, students, educators, and pro-liberty activists across the nation will be celebrating National School Choice Week, which began on Sunday and will wrap up on January 30. It’s a time to celebrate the education choices some students now enjoy and to open up similar opportunities for all students. All children deserve access to a quality education. Politicians must stop making parents ask for permission to educate their children properly, because parents know better than anyone else which educational strategies and environments will work best. It is up to all taxpayers to demand school choice and give parents the power to guide their children’s education.

School choice has been trending for a good many Januarys now, and that’s not just because of the successful promotion efforts of National School Choice Week (NSCW), held annually during the final week of January. After launching five years ago with just a few hundred public events, NSCW will sponsor 16,140 rallies, forums and the like in all 50 states this Jan. 24-30.

Although we often hear about distinctive American features such as apple pie, baseball, and freedom of speech, the single greatest characteristic of the American way is the willingness to provide opportunity for all. Unlike its European predecessors, the United States was always meant to be a place where your standing in the world isn’t determined by who your parents are but rather by an unrelenting spirit.

As any parent knows, every child learns in a way that’s tailored to his or her personality. That’s a fundamental reason all parents should have the right to choose the education of their child. Unfortunately, the current public school system is based on your street address instead of how your child learns.

When the Nevada Education Savings Account (ESA) law passed last week, there were two main reactions: celebration from school choice advocates who marveled at the scope and positive potential of the law, and the anti-choice crowd’s outrage at an allegedly impending dismantling of traditional public schools.