Colorado has been a leader for decades in addressing the growing demand for greater choice in educating our children.

Our state was among the early adopters in allowing public, independent charter schools to open in school districts across the state. They are able to tailor their offerings to meet wide-ranging students’ needs a lot more adroitly than traditional neighborhood schools ever could.

Colorado also took the initiative in the 1990s to let students and parents choose a different neighborhood school from the one to which their home address had assigned them. Today, public schoolers may attend a school that better suits them in another neighborhood or even in another school district, provided that there is space available.

And our state has been a leader, as well, in alternative approaches to K-12 learning that serve some students’ needs as no other kinds of schooling can. Like all-online learning as well as home schooling.

Which is why a lot of parents, educators and others in Colorado will be joining in the celebration of National School Choice Week, which runs through Saturday. Since its first observance in 2011, National School Choice Week has grown into what its organizers call the world’s largest celebration of opportunity in education.

There will be more than 460 National School Choice Week events across Colorado this week. They’ll include school fairs, parent information sessions, student talent showcases and open houses that representatives of the nonprofit National School Choice Week organization say will help make the school search process easier for parents and their kids.

The best solution for bad schooling is better schooling. The best way to achieve that is by giving parents and kids meaningful options to choose from. As in any other sector of society, competition among assorted options benefits everyone.

Lately, the school choice movement has hit an impasse in Colorado. Not for a lack of commitment by its advocates and certainly not due to a shortfall in demand among parents. It’s because dogma-driven politicians and special interests have politicized choice and turned it into a wedge issue. In fact, it rightly should rise above politics.

Both major political parties and all points on the political spectrum should be able to agree that giving each child the education that best fits that child is a higher priority than any ideology. In that light, National School Choice Week also serves to remind Colorado policy makers of their longtime resolve to provide meaningful educational options.

It’s ultimately up to the parent to decide whether a traditional public school, public-charter school, public-magnet school, private school, online school or home school is best for their child. An endeavor like National School Choice Week is doing its part by empowering parents and students with the resources necessary to better understand and choose their options.

The National School Choice Week organization describes school choice as “personal, not political,” encouraging “tens of millions of individual families to make tens of millions of individual decisions.”

That’s a message – and mission – we all can get behind.

For more information on National School Choice Week and an event near you, visit: SchoolChoiceWeek.com/states/colorado.

Denver Gazette editorial board