Doors Closing in Wake of Texas Choice Law

By Laura Miller

Just a few months after Texas joined such pioneering states as Minnesota and Massachusetts in enacting a statewide public-school-choice policy, its program is already being called a failure.

The problem is that while a new law allows students in low-rated public schools to transfer to another public school, districts can decline to participate. And many parents searching for better schools outside their districts have found that "choice" does not necessarily mean access.

In Fort Worth, one mother who wanted her son to attend a school in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw district said she received an abrupt response from the district's superintendent. "He said, 'If we take one in, we have to take them all in,"' recalled the mother, who asked...