School Choice Supporters Rally in Austin

The pro-voucher School Choice Rally Wednesday attracted an estiamted 3500 to 5000 people, and ABC's John Stossel was on hand to speak to the crowd. Peyton Walcott has pictures.

School choice is common sense accountability in education. It is a travesty that school choice isn't given a chance in Texas for even the poorest families in the worst schools. However, common sense leaves the room once the vested interests of education monopolists takes over - they think education should be about feeding a public education bureaucracy (with as little accountability as possible) rather than about creating the best education for the child. The Educrats oppose even allowing children in failing schools (which is 15% of schools) to participate in school choice. This denies a lifeline to children suffering from educational malpractice. To be anti-school-choice is to be anti-school-children.

"10 Principles of School Choice" (PDF) is a great booklet that lays out the common sense idea of school choice and how it should work:

1. Allow parents to choose
2. Funding should follow the child
3. Schools should compete
4. Empower school leaders
5. Empower teachers
6. Give parents adequate funding with incentives
7. Allow schools to succeed or fail
8. Preserve the autonomy of private schools
9. Teach democratic values
10. All parents should be free to choose

Education funding costs $100,000 per child over the 13 years it take to go from K to 12. Who's watching out for that investment? Parental involvement is a major predictor of child progress in education. With school choice, parents can correct bad educational outcomes by 'voting with their feet' and taking kids out of failing schools (or even 'good' schools that are failing to educate their particular kids). What could possibly be wrong with parental involvement, more accountability and more choice? Why, if school vouchers are such a horrible idea, does every anti-voucher big Government liberal support the same 'voucher' concept at the College level via the Pell Grant? Or the same concept as applied to food - Food Stamps? Or the same concept applied to housing (Section 8)? Oh, and did I mention vouchers would probably cut costs for taxpayers over time as well, as efficiency in schooling improves.

More school choice and education reform resources:

• Dr James Leininger on his $50 million philanthropic scholarship program and why he supports school choice - "I have never made a secret about what motivates me politically: the need to improve the lives of poor children in Texas."
  
• Parents in Charge Foundation
  
• Alliance for School Choice
  
• School choice NH research
  
• School choice works
  
• LEAD action - education reform news
  
• Manhattan Institute study on Florida A+ program