In the simplest of terms, it means letting every parent send their child to the school of their choice regardless of where they live. Parents choose schools based on their child's needs, not their address.

Wealthy and well-off people have always had school choice in America. But there's growing support for the idea that school choice, whether in the form of charters, vouchers or corporate tax credits, is a civil and social right for all parents of all income groups.

Currently, fourteen states plus the District of Columbia support some form of school choice including one or more of the following: vouchers, tax-credit scholarship programs, personal tax credits and deductions.

This very question is out of date.

We're for schools that are effective and efficient, whether they be public district schools, charter schools or private schools. We're critical of schools that are dysfunctional, no matter what kind. Supporting all of any type of school, without regard to how different ones perform, is a way of picking one category of adults over another, at the childrens' expense.

So whatever is best for the child -- that should be the guide.

Let us be perfectly clear: there are both great and lousy public schools; there are both great and lousy private schools. This is true for every state.

The simple truth is that competition is better than monopoly, and those who tell you otherwise are usually personally benefitting from the monopoly. On the other hand, if power were in the hands of the parents, they could make individual decisions about the particular schools in their town and how well each might fit their particular child.

And while it's obvious that there are many great public schools, the fact is the United States is in the midst of a quiet crisis, particularly in the worst districts -- schools where dropout rates are so profound that anyone who cares about children should support any structural change in those districts. The past course of lobbying for simply higher spending within the existing system can no longer be seriously advocated.

Funny that you never hear this argument given as a reason to close magnet schools. Magnet schools actually drain much more money from traditional district schools than vouchers (all public information). The difference is that magnet schools are generally unionized, so this particular kind of "draining" resources goes unopposed by teacher unions and the establishment.

The selective application of the "draining funds" argument with respect to vouchers but not magnet schools proves that union power is at the root of the voucher controversy, not concern for district school resources.

The fact is that a voucher system would improve education in all schools because public schools would react to private school competition by becoming better themselves:

PDF: School Choice Improves Public Schools

A charter school is a publicly funded elementary or secondary school that has been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools. Along with the greater freedom, charter schools are held to account for producing certain results, as set forth in the school's charter. For more info:

U.S. Charter Schools

Because charter schools usually don't use unionized teachers, they are often seen as a threat by the education establishment which seeks to limit their growth. State charters can be denied or revoked by political appointees, usually with no requirement to give a reason.

Bureaucrats in power can prevent the growth of charter schools to protect the jobs of adults in the traditional public district schools, at the expense of children.

Sure. We're all for that -- provided the teacher is talented, and many are.

But the issue of teacher pay is often a distraction. The establishment uses it as an argument for higher education spending overall. The little-known fact is that in many classrooms over 85% of the spending per classroom goes somewhere besides the teacher. In other words, very little of the money usually reaches the classroom.

So when the public votes for higher school budgets -- thinking about the teachers -- the money often ends up going to patronage jobs, contractors and administrators, with the new spending ultimately having no effect on teacher pay or student/teacher ratios at all.

Instead, the jobs frequently go to friends of the establishment: Assistant Superintendents and Department Heads that have no real responsibilities, redundant Managers of Facility Maintenance, contractors that either do no work or do unnecessary work, and the like.

You don't have to be an accountant to get a sense of this -- just look atthe budgets of private, charter or parochial schools. They often do a better job with only two-thirds the spending per student.

It is indeed ironic that parents often fight to get their kids into these lower spending schools.

(Schools of Choice mean Charters, Parochial, Private, Magnet or Voucher schools -- any school where students, parents or guardians pro-actively select it to attend, rather than a school where students are assigned to it geographically based on home address.)

Once again there are exceptions, but in general, schools that have to be chosen by someone perform better than schools that are guaranteed a supply of students based on home address, in all kinds of measures.

Critics often dismiss reports of standardized testing differences by claiming that the schools of choice have it easy because they benefit from 'cream of the crop' kids walking through the door before a single lesson is taught.

Turns out, that's a myth.

How do we know that? Well, in many places, more children apply for local charter schools than there are available spots, so lotteries are held to determine which kids get in. This creates a perfect double-blind study -- some kids' names get picked, and they attend the charter school -- other kids' names don't get picked, and they go back to the district school. Since the two populations were divided by a random lottery, there are no differences in income, race, religion, parental involvement, etc. The only difference becomes the schools to which the children are sent.

Using this double-blind, lottery model, economist Caroline Hoxby of Harvard showed that schools which have to be chosen to remain in existence (in this particular case, Chicago-based charters) consistently outperform disctrict schools that don't have to be actively chosen. In other words, her data debunks the "smarter kid walking through the door" myth and proves the schools themselves are better when they have to attract students to survive:

Hoxby Chicago Study Synopsis

Also, remember that the level of parent's involvement is not fixed; it can change. It turns out that parents who've chosen a school, whether public or private, tend to become more involved in their kid's education in lots of ways than that same parent was when their kid attended a previous school before the choice. The parents simply become more personally invested in the outcome once they've been asked to make a decision. It's both human nature and common sense, and it applies whether the choice was a district, charter, parochial, private or voucher-supported school.