The year of choice?

The Wall Street Journal already declared 2011 "The year of school choice." We hope instead that it is merely the first year of a wave of school choice that washes over the country and permanently changes the way parents and students think about schooling.

KSL-TV reported this week that school choice is gaining popularity in Utah, with some parents willing to drive many miles out of their way to deliver children to schools that best meet their needs. This increase is coming despite the fact Utah allows universal choice only within the confines of the public school system, where parents have a basic choice between traditional public and charter schools. Last year, 40,132 students were enrolled in Utah's 75 charter schools.

But it is evidence that parents here want greater control over how their children are educated, much as parents everywhere.

Opponents of school choice always have had difficultly articulating why allowing greater choices would be bad for students. They tend to rely on economic arguments, such as that allowing private school vouchers would take valuable resources away from public schools. Denying universal choice, however, has served to confine choice only to those who have the means to afford private schools — an elitist policy that exaggerates societal inequities.

Meanwhile, officials with the ACT college entrance exam recently reported that only 27 percent of Utah students who took the exam this year scored well enough to be considered ready for college. Clearly, there is room for improvement, and while a more competitive educational marketplace may not solve all problems, it would apply the kinds of pressures the system needs in order to focus more on academic performance.

In a recent syndicated op-ed, Ed Fuelner, president of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, noted that 18 states and the District of Columbia now have policies in place allowing for private-school choice. Ohio now has four such programs. Arizona offers an Education Savings Account program in which the state deposits 90 percent of its per-pupil funding for a participating student to use toward private-school tuition, online classes, home-schooling expenses or just to save for college.

Other states offer tax credits to businesses that provide money for scholarships, or to individuals who meet qualifications and choose to send their students some place other than a public school.