If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, Americans will have two presidential candidates who are open to school choice measures.

Barack Obama went on Fox News Sunday this week and said, “We should be experimenting with charter schools” and “different ways of compensating teachers” — beliefs he’s long held but not always trumpeted, The New Republic’s Josh Patashnik says. Obama advocated charter schools and performance-pay for teachers in Illinois, and has even hinted that he wouldn’t rule out the idea of school vouchers.

John McCain visited New Orleans Thursday on his “It’s Time for Action” tour, stopping in cities the campaign said the federal government has forgotten, but where local solutions are working.

New Orleans has become a proving ground for charter schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. According to the campaign, it has the highest percentage of students in charter schools among U.S. Cities. Most of the city’s students now attend charter schools. Last year, students in New Orleans charter schools out-scored their peers in traditional public schools on a standardized test.

A president friendly to charter schools could spur the already-growing charter school movement. The number of charter schools nationwide grew by 11 percent in 2006, serving a student body that is on average 53 percent minority and 54 percent low-income, according a survey from the Center for Education Reform.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., J.C. Huizenga, the founder of National Heritage Academies, a national chain of 55 K-8 charter schools located in six states, recently announced plans to started a college prep high school to go head-to head with a new public college prep school.

Chicago school teacher Will Okun recently described his frustrations with traditional city schools in an blog post entitled “The Mire.” The Chicago Public Schools have 27 charter schools on 48 campuses. Hundreds are on the waiting lists, and the city plans for more by 2010.

Okun, while cautioning parents and policy-makers to remember the students left behind in the public schools, describes parents desperate to pull their children from traditional schools:

Charter-school parents speak of higher graduation rates, better facilities, more extracurricular opportunities, caring teachers, and stricter discipline. Most importantly, these parents speak of charter schools with a sense of hope and purpose that no longer exists in most public high schools on the West Side. … I do not blame parents for wanting to surround their children with other children and parents who give education top priority.”

Advocates of Arizona school choice continue to fight in a decade-long controversy surrounding the state’s scholarship-tax-credit laws. Last week, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld laws that aid almost 25,000 children in Arizona private schools through the tax-deductible donations of private and corporate donors. [Correction: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last week after the district court upheld the law.]

Since 1997, taxpayers have received tax credit - up to $1,000 per married couple and $500 per individual - for making donations to School-Tuition-Organizations (STOs). These non-profit groups grant tuition funds to individual students, retaining only ten percent for administrative costs.

Last year, Arizona’s 56 STOs received some $51 million in tax-donations and distributed $ 41 million in scholarships to 357 private schools. Because many STOs are religiously affiliated, critics cite these same statistics as proof that the tax-credit program is an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Supporters of the tax credit defend the program’s legality and point to the advances made in Arizona’s education system through broadening parents’ choices. Dr. Thomas Askew is headmaster of Tucson’s Cornerstone Christian Academy and member of the selection committee for the state’s largest, evangelical Christian STO. Askew told WoW, “The exponential growth of charter schools and the incremental growth of private schools due to tax credits has really made the average Arizona taxpayer-consumer much more savvy about the choices available to their children.”

Askew credits the program for his own school’s increase in enrollment and diversity. When he became headmaster in 2001, 34 percent of 133 students received scholarships. Now, 74 percent of 178 students at the academy receive aid.

Despite encouraging data from his school and others like it, Askew says that after ten years of opposition, the courts will make the final decision: “We’ll never get past the local challenges until the Supreme Court rules that it’s constitutional.”

Catholic schools are converting — from private and religious to public and secular, a change that irks both conservatives and liberals. Underfunded Catholic schools in Denver and D.C. are seeking to become charter schools. Conservatives don’t like the fact that the schools must drop all religious instruction to receive state funding, and liberals worry that the schools won’t drop religious instruction at all.

Dan Lips, education analyst for the Heritage Foundation, told WoW the situation “underscores the need for real school choice policies that allow parents to choose between public or private or charter schools.”

Lips said charter schools compete with private schools as a free alternative to public education, and the competition “threatens private schools.” According to the Denver Post, the Escuela de Guadalupe School is struggling to raise $200,000 by November 30 because the parents they serve cannot afford $8,000 tuition. School president David Card calls the process “devastating. … But it’s the reality.”

Charter schools have more autonomy than public schools, but they are still subject to state regulation and state testing. “Converting into a charter school would really sacrifice the independence that private and religious schools currently have,” Lips said.

Lips advocates tax credits, school vouchers, and educational savings account so that parents can afford private school tuition. He notes that in Arizona, a state that provides tax credits for private school scholarships, Catholic schools are opening, not closing. Government funding often comes with governmental strings attached, but Lips said so far, offering tax credits has not led to excessive regulation.

Lips said if advocating charter schools “comes at the expense of ending the private education sector, it would be a shame.” Offering “real school choice” will enable private schools to “compete on an equal playing field.”