Morning Bell: National School Choice Week is Underway

Lindsey Burke /

The first-ever National School Choice Week is underway! This week, January 23rd – 29th, school choice advocates from across the country will host events and highlight the benefits of educational freedom.

More than 150 organizations are hosting events in nearly every state. It’s a grassroots movement of national proportions to highlight the benefits of school choice and demand access to quality educational options. Speaker John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Sens. Joe Lieberman and John McCain and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush – among many others – are all “in” for National School Choice Week.

And it’s a movement whose time has come. Nationally, thousands of children are trapped in more than 1,700 public schools labeled as “dropout factories,” in which less than 60 percent of students graduate within four years.  But even for those students not assigned to the worst government schools, academic achievement has stagnated over the years, graduation rates have flat lined, and American students are out-competed by their international counterparts.

For hundreds of thousands of children, the opportunity to escape failing public schools and choose a school that best meets their needs would be life-changing.

But for too many families across the country, the possibility is out of their reach. President Obama told Matt Lauer last year: (more…)