The American Center\nfor Transforming Education believes the education of the child is a fundamental\nresponsibility of the family. Although parental choice in education is widely\navailable to those with financial resources, poorer families are left behind. School\nchoice will allow all families to fulfill their responsibility as parents,\nregardless of socioeconomic status, by choosing the school that best meets their\nchildren\u2019s needs. Empowering parents strengthens both schools and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, school choice\ncurrently only applies to a small\npercentage of students, as noted above. Don Nielsen, Senior Fellow at Discovery\nInstitute, points out that \u201cinnovation and creativity are much more\nlikely to occur in a charter school than in a traditional public school\u2026until\nwe are able to deregulate our public schools, it makes sense to continue to\npush for choice, vouchers, and charters. Each has the potential to improve the\nacademic opportunity for some students and that makes them worth trying.\u201d<\/em> This\nis why the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act<\/em> can be seen\nas promising. Parents who are excluded from exercising their right to access\nthe best school for their children often feel marginalized and ineffective in\ntheir responsibility for educating their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Jeffrey S. Solochek writes<\/a> in the Tampa Bay Times<\/em> \u201cThe federal Every Student Succeeds Act placed several new requirements on states, to make it easier for parents to access and understand data about how their schools and districts are performing.\u201d <\/em>This has the ability to restore power to the parents and ensures that vital information is provided that measures students\u2019 progress. Only time will tell if this new federal law is truly effective for school choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More parental choice is both responsible and warranted. It not only empowers parents by giving choices for their children over state-appointed bureaucrats, but it holds schools more accountable and responsive to the families they serve. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The American Center for Transforming Education believes the education of the child is a fundamental responsibility of the family. Although parental choice in education is widely available to those with financial resources, poorer families are left behind. School choice will allow all families to fulfill their responsibility as parents, regardless of socioeconomic status, by choosing the school that best meets their children\u2019s needs. Empowering parents strengthens both schools and communities. However, school choice currently only applies to a small percentage of students, as noted above. Don Nielsen, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, points out that \u201cinnovation and creativity are much more likely to occur in a charter school than in a traditional public school\u2026until we are able to deregulate our public Read More ›<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-choice"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2017"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}