School Choice and Politics

School choice has had some significant political successes and many political defeats. Many good individuals and strong organizations advocating support for school choice are committed to advancing educational reform by expanding the power of consumers in the educational marketplace.

Yet that conception, by itself, has proved to have limited political appeal. ACSC’s fundamental commitment to families does not preclude collaboration with advocacy groups motivated by a market-driven reform agenda. But in placing families first, ACSC creates a unique and powerful opportunity to expand support for school choice to include greater numbers of political centrists, religious leaders, social justice advocates, and ordinary citizens who are either uninformed or uninspired by current educational reform debates.

ACSC has been organized in response to the political fact that the empowerment of ordinary families will come only as the fruit of a credible coalition of recognized centrists. ACSC seeks to speak to those of whatever party affiliation who resonate to arguments about the family and related communitarian values. ACSC, both by design and good fortune, has assembled the insight and voice of a critical mass of activists and thinkers who will make those arguments.

ACSC is a needed vehicle for the reintroduction of family choice in education to an under-informed public.