By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

HARRISBURG — Americans like to choose.

As consumers, we have an endless number of options when it comes to spending money — we choose everything from the clothes we buy to the colleges we attend. Our grocery stores carry dozens of varieties of breakfast cereal, our ice cream parlors have 31 or more flavors and our towns have churches that represent diverse denominations.

It’s not a new phenomenon.

But increasingly, that desire for choice is muscling its way into one of America’s largest monopolies — the public school system.

“School choice is definitely the fastest growing sector of American educational reform,” said Andrew Campanella, spokesman for National School Choice Week, a weeklong observance including more than 500 events in all 50 states and Washington D.C. The events celebrate opportunities for school choice and provide a means for urging lawmakers to offer more educational options to more students.

For a full listing of all events, click here.

The Wall Street Journal declared 2011 as the year of school choice, and the numbers back up that claim. More than 500 new charter schools were created nationwide last year, and more than half of the 50 states debated some form of school choice legislation, with 13 states passing laws that either created or expanded educational opportunities for students.

More than 2 million students in the U.S. now attend a charter school, another 2 million are homeschooled and more than 200,000 attend a private school with the help of vouchers or tax credits.

School choice as a concept takes many forms — including school voucher programs, tax credit scholarships for private schools, homeschooling and online education — and it has taken hold in communities as demographically divergent as Washington D.C. and Iowa.

There is no single approach and no national formula, but advocates say that’s the point.