A parent's right to choose

National | Educational choice gains momentum with the public and puts heat on schools to shape up or shut down | Lynn Vincent

The confrontation is spreading. According to a Heritage Foundation report on school choice released earlier this year, children in all 50 states now benefit from private scholarships like those funded by CEO Kids First America and the Children's Scholarship Fund. A $500 tax credit for Arizona private-school families passed judicial muster. Free-market principles are proving effective both in providing options for kids trapped in failing public schools—and in improving public schools that are failing. And more than 250,000 students now attend charter schools, a type of public/private hybrid with decided limitations but still an improvement over the previous no-choice regimes.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-

winning economist and a blocking fullback for the school-choice movement, hopes that this momentum will propel school-choice initiatives—including November voucher initiatives in Michigan and California—to victory. "What I'm really counting on is the public's awareness of the deficiencies of the public schools," Mr. Friedman told WORLD.