School Choice is on the March

In the twenty-five years since A Nation at Risk, magnet schools, charter schools, voucher and tax-credit programs, open-enrollment options, home schooling and private scholarship programs like ACE have flourished across the nation, answering a growing cry for help from parents desperate to provide their children with a quality education.

Twenty-five years ago there were no school choice programs in America. Today, there are twenty-three such programs in fourteen states, plus D.C.

Twenty-five years ago no charter schools existed. Today, forty states allow charter schools and there are over 4,000 such schools across the country serving more than 1.1 million children.

Today, children in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and our nation’s capital enjoy varying degrees of educational freedom through school choice programs. Thousands of other children across the nation find educational choice through privately-funded scholarship programs like ACE.

All told, more than 150,000 children attend private school through a voucher or tax-credit scholarship; another 650,000 students have their educational costs reduced by personal tax credits; over one million children attend charter schools; almost 1.2 million are homeschooled.