ABSTRACT
In the author's experience, most school choice advocates, and parents overwhelmingly, are motivated by a strong conviction that parental freedom is prevented by educational finance monopoly (EFM), and that the great virtues of love and justice, which should dominate and drive schooling, are obstructed by EFM. School choice without financial penalty can be defined very easily. It simply refers to some or all of tax dollars that have been dedicated to education being allocated or assigned by parents and guardians rather than state bureaucratic educational mechanisms. Educational choice, even as it acknowledges and makes room for a common core of civic values and teachings, provides for the naturally pluralistic social and ethical forms that evolve in a free, democratic community. The financial empowerment of parents, enabling them to select their child's educational environment, has a revolutionary potential to change the whole way contentious issues are looked at and solved.
