By Irene F. Starkehaus -
School Choice Week was created back in 2011 as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical awareness campaign seeking to celebrate the educational diversity that is achieved when children have learning options. It is now the largest annual celebration of educational choice in America.The week allows parents and other individuals to promote educational opportunity across the country.
In 2013, over 3,600 events were organized across all 50 states. More than 3,000 schools held special events and more than a million students participated. The point of the celebration was to promote alternative education opportunities while celebrating public school success stories and education innovations like charter schools and magnet schools.
We are now just a few weeks away from School Choice Week for 2014:
School choice is a relevant discussion to be having in Illinois. The Illinois General Assembly voted in May of 2013 that from April 1, 2013 through April 1, 2014, there is a moratorium on the establishment of new charter schools with virtual-schooling components in school districts. Chicago is exempt from this statute.
There is little doubt that children are the ones who will ultimately suffer from the protectionism that is being legislated in Illinois at the expense of quality education. Per Ted Dabrowski of the Illinois Policy Institute:
In downstate and suburban Illinois, a mere 15 charter schools are available to nearly 1.7 million potential students. Only 3,500 Illinois children attend charter schools outside of Chicago. That compares poorly to Chicago, where nearly one out of every eight students now learns in a charter school. More than 45,000 students attend 110 schools across the city – and thousands more are on waiting lists.
If Illinois' downstate and suburban students attended charter schools at the same rate as Chicago students, more than 200,000 students would be enrolled in these schools of choice.
Per the Illinois Policy Institute - State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora and others in the Legislature work tirelessly to reduce school choice in the State of Illinois. Chapa LaVia and Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Westchester, have introduced bills aimed at ending the state charter commission. The President of the Chicago Teachers Union Karen Lewis also greatly opposes expansion of those charter schools that offer competitive alternatives to CPS's education nightmare. She'll ask you to just forget about the billion dollar annual deficit that Chicago endures due to last year's salary increase for teachers. We'll just bridge that funding gap by raising taxes on Illinois residents.
This flies in the face of education innovation and encourages stagnation through its defiant lack of diversity. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice explains the importance of school choice like this:
School choice gives parents the freedom to choose their children's education, while encouraging healthy competition among schools to better serve families' needs. School choice lets parents use the public funds set aside for their children's education to choose the schools—public or private, near or far, religious or secular—that work best for them…
…It is only the tyranny of the status quo that leads us to take it for granted that in schooling, government monopoly is the best way for the government to achieve its objective.
Enthusiasts of school choice believe that parents should be empowered to choose the best educational environments for their children. Upcoming school choice events will be held from January 26 to February 1, 2014.
