THE FRONT-RUNNER SPEAKS:

Consumer choice created the most innovative and powerful economy in the world. Choice makes computers cheaper, images sharper, cars safer, and services faster.

Choice rewards success and weeds out stagnation, inefficiency, and failure.

This is why school choice is critical to the education-reform movement, and why National School Choice Week, which began this Sunday, January 26, is more than just a proclamation. It is a call to action for one of our most cherished principles.

How is it that parents have a say over every aspect of their children's lives, yet often must delegate the critical decision of where they go to school to political boards and government bureaucracies? This has created an education monopoly that spurns accountability, views innovation as a threat, and prioritizes the job security of employees over the learning of children.

The result is hardly surprising: America has become a global leader in education spending and a global laggard in academic achievement. Last year we learned that Vietnamese 15-year-olds outperformed American teenagers in math and science on the Program for International Student Assessment.

That is not a wake-up call. It is a five-alarm fire.

The Ma Bell model of public education has failed.

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