Ryan Boots, blogging over at the Alliance for School Choice's site Edspresso, today unveiled a "scarlet letter H," icon, for "Hypocrisy," for politicians and bureaucrats who exercise school choice by finding any means necessary to get their kids the hell out of crappy public schools.

This is obviously a touchy issue, and he has me hook, line, and sinker when he notes that the hypocrisy stems from wanting "to keep kids in public schools." No argument there.

Boots is focusing on Los Angeles, where anyone with any clue and any amount of cash in the vault finds other ways to have their kiddies educated, but the same thing plays out all over the country. Look no further than NYC, where the original plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit (City Councilman Robert Jackson, D-Manhattan) opted to send his daughter to a fancy-schmancy private school; where Governor-in-waiting Eliot Spitzer has elite private school blood oozing through his veins; where bigtime educrats, labor leaders, mayors, etc. all found ways out of the long-troubled NYC public schools.

Yeah, it takes some chutzpah to tell kids without the means that they are stuck with the subpar public schools we give them.

But here is where Ryan loses me:

If public schools are good enough for others' kids, they should be good enough for these leaders. More to the point, if they want parents to send their kids back to the district, they should be the first in line.

My beef? I just don't think that any parent, no matter who he or she is (or what their positions are on various school choice issues) should sacrifice their children's education for any reason, not least of all political symbolism or peer pressure. No parent should ever send their children to schools they don't consider up to par. EVERY PARENT, whether they are rich or poor, should be able to decide for themselves what schooling option is best for each individual child.

Every school is different. Every child is different. A family with multiple children may decide that a specific public school is a good fit for some of their kids, but incompatible for other siblings. A family on the north side of the street may be happy with the neighborhood public school, while the family on the south side of the same street may be suffering from a miserable experience at the same school. Parents should never be forced to choose based on "what is good for other people's kids."

Even ardent school choice opponents should never put themselves in any situation where they are forced to send their children to time-wasting, dead-end schools. Their kids deserve better. Every kid deserves to attend a non-crappy school. Please support the Anti-Crap Doctrine.

(Yeah my tongue is in my cheek.)