Parents Need More Choices Than Charters Alone

St. Louis Post-Dispatch readers are debating parental choice in education in a series of interesting letters to the editor. Here’s an excerpt from one:

The desegregation program offers city public school students choices that will continue for a few more years. Charter schools are another way to increase options within the public sector that are open to all students.

This letter criticizes voucher programs because, the authors claim, private schools limit their enrollments to a select few. Evidence to the contrary appears in this L.A. Times article. Even in places like Los Angeles, with many charter and magnet schools, parents have to fight bureaucracy and long wait lists to find schools for their kids.

If, in addition, parents were given vouchers (or tax-credit-funded scholarships) that they could take to private schools, new schools would open to meet the demand. Parents who can afford to pay tuition have no trouble enrolling their kids in private schools. Vouchers would give everyone that opportunity.