"Education shall be free [publicly supported] at least at the elementary and fundamental stages...Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 (United Nations)

Parents in this country certainly like the idea of choosing their own children’s school.

In 1997, investment banker Theodore Forstmann helped found the Children’s Scholarship Fund to help poor children (defined as those eligible for free or subsidized school lunches) who could not otherwise attend parochial or independently funded schools. In 1997, during its first year of existence, the Children’s Scholarship Fund received applications from 8,000 parents for 1,000 scholarships. A mere four years later, 1.25 million parents from 20,000 American communities applied for 40,000 scholarships. Obviously, supply is not meeting demand for school choice in America.

So how can freedom of educational choice be expanded in an orderly and equitable manner, so that parents are provided with the schools they desire, public education is strengthened, and the hard-working teachers in American schools can be made to feel welcomed, rather than threatened, by school choice? The private sector alone, as demonstrated above, clearly cannot do so. And the federal government – despite President Bush’s strong support of school choice – does not yet appear ready to do so, either. In fact, not only has the evenly divided Senate come out against school choice in its consideration of the President’s education plan, but so too has the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

School choice is one issue that does not break down along traditional partisan lines. While it is supported by most in the GOP and opposed by most Democrats, it also has support from many urban liberals and opposition from some suburban Republicans. Yet when reading the above selection from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it matters not whether one is conservative, moderate, independent, or liberal, a Republican or Democrat or Libertarian: school choice becomes a noble idea that transcends political affiliation. Indeed, the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s Board of Advisors includes luminaries in both parties from Henry Kissinger to Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

In that spirit, then, I would offer the following six arguments as bridges to unite those of us who support school choice with those who, as of yet, don’t:

1. We Americans expect goods and services to be customized to fit our needs and desires. Why should education be exempt from this expectation?

2. Every child needs and deserves access to a school that meets his or her educational needs. While most families would still enroll their children in neighborhood schools if given a choice, many families would select a school outside their neighborhood if it more closely matched their educational philosophy and values.

3. In my state of Illinois, dual enrollment in public and parochial schools is allowed, though the law has not been utilized. If dual enrollment were allowed nationwide, parents could have another kind of “school choice”: their children learn the core academics during the part of the day spent in public school, and then learn theology and morality during the rest of the day in parochial school.

4. For those who oppose “school choice” because they believe that vouchers take away money from public education, tax credits are better than vouchers because they do not reduce the amount of money spent on public education. Tax credits for contributions to scholarship funds and tax credits for educational expenses would give greater freedom of school choice to poor and working class families.

5. For those who oppose charter schools because of concerns that they lack the proper management, a state charter school district could be created in each state specifically for the purpose of sponsoring, governing, and managing publicly funded charter schools open to any children in the state. Current public school administrators and teachers should be allowed to transfer into such a state charter school district, should they so desire, and they should be allowed to retain their seniority and tenure.

6. Unions can play a valuable role in protecting teachers from unreasonable parents or taxpayers, and capricious decisions of school administrators. Yet most parochial, independent and charter school teachers are not union members. National teachers’ unions should cooperate with such schools, rather than fight them – for example, by offering less expensive associate memberships for non-public and charter school teachers who need some of a union’s benefits and protections. Indeed, I would argue that independent and parochial school teachers, who perform a role identical to that of public educators, should be allowed to participate in their state’s teacher retirement fund instead of Social Security.

Of course, parents need straightforward, accurate, and comparable information to make informed school choice decisions. Schools should be required to publish an annual summary for cohorts of students performing below, at, and above grade level – though they should also have the freedom to choose the specific standards that will guide the school’s instructional program and the achievement test to be used for the school report card. This is critical so that schools can differentiate themselves from their competition. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is the so-called “national report card” favored by President Bush in his education proposal, is the most valid and reliable external exam to confirm the integrity of school report cards.

But all of the above is mere rhetoric unless followed by action. Members of Teacher Choice, a national association of some 3,000 teachers and educators (including myself) who support choice, accountability, and reduced regulation in education, plan to meet soon with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington to remind them that many teachers do, in fact, support school choice. As Congress debates the President’s education plan in this month between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, let’s move our nation forward by restoring the inalienable right of parental choice to mothers and fathers across America.

Marilyn Keller Rittmeyer is a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University’s School of Education, and co-founder of Thomas Jefferson Charter School in Des Plaines, Illinois. She is also a member of the National Education Association.