It's Time for School ChoiceThe death knell oft sounded for our nation's public schools can be heard everywhere, from the breakfast conversations of Main Street diners to the committee rooms and hallways of our National Capitol schools. Citing declining test scores and the huge disparity in quality among schools, many argue that something has gone horribly wrong in our country's public schools. They fear that the very concept of the American dream may be based on increasingly unstable ground. Despite these terrible words, public education is not a losing battle. Although the situation in rural and urban areas can be considered desperate, the system is certainly recoverable. Indeed, school choice programs could offer the country's public schools a chance at salvation. By increasing school choice, not only would more educational avenues be opened up for disadvantaged young people, but the standard of education offered by schools for all students would also be raised. Choice programs would allow market forces to clean up public schools, streamlining them, making them more efficient, and perhaps even telling schools unable to adapt to “ship out.” However, critics vehemently argue that school choice programs essentially mean an abandonment of traditional public education. Rather than market forces raising the standards of all schools, they fear that choice programs could further stratify our nation's schools, widening the gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged. For the opposition, school choice programs are little more than cleverly disguised programs that promise hope to disadvantaged members of society but instead merely entrench well-connected and well-informed people more deeply in their positions of luxury… in the means of paper ......or visit before making your school selection. The success of the White Plains program lies in the fact that it successfully intertwined the positive elements of traditional choice ideology with solutions to the objections of traditional choice. It actively seeks to give every student a fair chance at an education, placing the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of educators and the power in the hands of parents – where it belongs. This is therefore a shining example of how school choice initiatives can positively benefit school districts and, more importantly, students across the country. Done correctly, school choice can preserve those things we love most about our public schools while promoting a bold new educational climate of engaged and contemplative parents and educators. This is a future that I think we would all like to see.