Turning next to school choice, we have an interesting position paper from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It reviews the progress Texas has made in liberating students from failing schools and offers some suggestions for taking reforms in Texas farther.

The paper rightly notes that “school choice” encompasses many mechanisms, from charter schools to tuition tax deductions and credits to voucher schools to (a more recent trend) “virtual” schools, where students can access software on the internet.

The Foundation’s report has useful information on all these areas.

Start with charter schools. Texas has come a long way from 1995, when the state legislature first allowed charter schools, to today, when the state has 185 of them collectively enrolling 120,000 students. This is an admirable growth, but there is much more to be done. The collective wait list for these schools has exploded, from 17,000 students in 2007-2008 to 40,000 in 2008-2009, and to 56,000 in 2009-2010. The problem here, as in other states, is that the vicious rent-seekers who oppose all school reform — i.e., teachers’ unions and their allies — put a cap of 215 on the number of charter schools.

This cap obviously should be eliminated. All the states should just let as many charter schools open as there are parents and students who want them. However, moves to remove this cap failed in the last legislative session, and while the state has agreed to guarantee bonds to allow new charters, it jacked up the regulations on them (even though they are already operating under the broad control of the public school system).

For the rest of the article, go to School Reform Is Making Advances across America