The following are answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs) regarding school choice and what choice means for students, educators, schools and communities. The answers to these FAQs are intended to provide only an introductory overview of key school choice issues. Links with additional information are provided for those who are interested in learning more.
What Does School Choice Mean?
The term “school choice” means giving parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend. Traditionally, children are assigned to a public school according to where they live. People of economic means already have school choice, because they can afford to move to an area with high quality public schools, or to enroll their children in private schools. Parents without such means, until recently, generally had no school choices, and had to send their children to the schools assigned to them by the district, regardless of the school’s quality or appropriateness for their children.
School choice creates better educational opportunities for all students, because it uses the dynamics of consumer opportunity and provider competition to drive service quality. This principle can be found anywhere you look, from cars to colleges, but it’s largely absent in our public school system and the poor results are evident, especially in the centers of American culture – our cities. School choice programs foster parental involvement and high expectations by giving parents the option to educate their children as they see fit. It re-asserts the rights of parents and the best interests of children over the convenience of the system, infuses accountability and quality into the system, and provides educational opportunity where none existed before.
What Kinds of School Choice Exist Today?
→ Full school choice programs, also known as tuition vouchers, provide parents with a portion of the public educational funding allotted for their child to
