Increasing Parent's Choices

How can it ever be a bad thing when one is given a choice, especially pertaining to the education of one's own child? As Charles Glenn pointed out, "parents have a fundamental right...to choose the schooling that will shape their children's understanding of the world." As a mother of three, and each being distinctly different in personality and needs, I've had to utilize all forms availabe (parochial, public, and charter). The oldest started in parochial school and went as far as the 10th grade then went into the charter school. Why did I switch to charter? As brought up in our class presentation, I believe Mary, a couple weeks ago...the cost! As my children grew and progressed through the parochial system, so increased my tuition! By 10th grade, she was a National Honors student but not eneough scholarship was available and you can only work but so many Bingo's to help with the tuition! So here comes the hard decision...continue with the parochial and continue working a second job just to cover the tuition (approx. $5,000 for H.S. in 1999) or go to the public system? NEVER PUBLIC, not where we live, with these bad kids, my mind went racing! As noted in the article Charter Schools on the Rise, "the population of charters has more than doubled." I believe this is because so many of us are caught in a"parent trap." We want the best for our children academically and do not live in the best public school district while on the other hand, the more realistic view, can't afford the private/parochial schools. So, as many parents, I turned to the charter school as an alternative to the public runned school due to not meeting eligibility for a private-school voucher, as noted by Shanker in the article The Charter School Idea Turns 20.
My oldest is currentlyin her second year of college on an Honors Scholarship, thanks to this particular charter school. Because of this I am compelled to disagree with the statement "most high-poverty charter schools, like most high-poverty regular public schools, fail to produce high levels of academic performance," in the Charter School Idea Turns 20. This particular charter school that I speak of has been noted for their various achievements in the Cleveland Plain Dealer as well as in U.S.News and World Report as one of the "upcoming premier charter schools in the Cleveland area." Charter schools have worked for my two girls but not for my son. So now back to square one after this school year. Public school or charter school because I can't qualify for a voucher, but I don't want him in our local public school, can't home school. Oh, what to do? Haven't I gone in a circle with this issue? But it's okay because I have a CHOICE! As stated in a Defining Moment for Charter Schools, "now there are some outstanding ones and some lemons, but charter schools overall are not proving to be radically dissimilar to other public schools." This just goes to prove that your lemon may be someone else's lemon-aid. To paraphrase and expand on the same article, wouldn't it be ideal if all modes (public, private/parochial,and charter) were able to intermingle, with shared "lessons learned" and expand into shared training and more, therefore yielding the "Internet" era of schools, allowing the best schools to get even better.
So back to the original question of Is Increasing Choice for Parents Good for American Education? How can it be bad if you have your child's best interest at heart? Going back to the theme that we have been discussing since the beginning of the semester...how do we prepare our children to become an active and integral part of the working force and therefore assimilating into society and can hopefully compete globally. This is where parents come in get involved and exercise their right/choice of educational format to enhance, encourage and promote the growth of our children academically for today and tomorrow. For me the charter system worked for two out of three children. Thanks to this democratic society I have the CHOICE to figure out what works for the third.