The Department of Education released a handbook last week aimed at helping parents make informed decisions when choosing schools for their children. But some felt the agency itself could have made a better choice when assembling a panel of parents to talk about the virtues of school choice.
Featured on the five-member panel were parents who had helped lead the fights in their respective cities for publicly financed private school vouchers in the District of Columbia and Milwaukee, as well as parents with children using such tuition vouchers in Cleveland and the nation鈥檚 capital.
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The fifth parent enrolled her children in a charter school in Washington after consulting with D.C. Parents for School Choice, a group at the forefront of the successful fight last year to establish the city鈥檚 federally financed voucher program.
Panel members spoke passionately about their experiences in shopping for schools and their feelings on the need for parental choice. They also plugged the department鈥檚 new 43-page guide, 鈥淐hoosing a School for Your Child.鈥�
But the panel鈥檚 pro-voucher message raised concern among some of those on hand for the booklet鈥檚 April 12 unveiling at the Education Department鈥檚 Washington headquarters.
Susan Nogan, a senior policy analyst for the National Education Association, which strongly opposes vouchers, noted that the invitation to the event had highlighted the school choices available to families under the federal No Child Left Behind Act but made no mention of voucher programs.
Ms. Nogan said that 鈥渉elping parents to make choices under No Child Left Behind did not seem to be the agenda of this panel.鈥�
鈥淚t鈥檚 unfortunate that the department didn鈥檛 invite panelists who were qualified to speak about choices available under No Child Left Behind, since that was the stated topic of the event, and instead chose to use the opportunity to promote their ideological agenda,鈥� she said.
Ms. Nogan did not criticize the booklet, though, calling it 鈥渞easonable.鈥�
Published by the department鈥檚 office for innovation and improvement, the handbook gives parents a step-by-step checklist for selecting schools and provides thumbnail sketches of public and private schooling options.
Michael J. Petrilli, the office鈥檚 second in command, said in response to Ms. Nogan鈥檚 remarks that 鈥減anel members discussed choosing public schools, charter schools, private schools鈥攖hey represented the full spectrum of the education system. It鈥檚 not factually correct to say that the parents only talked about vouchers.鈥�
