The School-Choice Moment.

ESA programs, in other words, are more than school-choice programs that empower families to choose among schools; they are true educational-choice programs that enable them to customize their kids' education. There is good reason to believe that traditional public schools, for which standardized-test scores were part of state-mandated accountability systems, tended to tailor their instruction to what was going to be on the test. Differences in test-score performance might have been due as much to curricular alignment as to school quality. Private schools and school systems should consider taking advantage of ESAs to expand, start new schools, or seed affiliated micro schools (purposely small schools, usually with fewer than 20 students, which may be a good fit for some smaller communities). It is reasonable for a state to seek some assurances that children are being educated, but an excessive focus on accountability (for example, demands that parents or schools administer state achievement tests) can backfire by discouraging participation. [Extracted from the article]