Republicans and Democrats across all levels of government are writing, Tweeting and speaking on National School Choice Week.

Last week, a Politico article suggested that school choice was a Republican effort to reach African American and Latino voters. Yet in Pennsylvania, both Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey and State Senator Anthony Williams, a Philadelphia Democrat, support school choice along with others in each party.

Toomey and Williams were slated for a Philadelphia event during National School Choice Week. However, the event was cancelled due to inclement weather. Hundreds of other events are taking place from Jan. 26 to Feb. 1, 2014.

On Jan. 27, House Speaker John Boehner published a Spanish-language opinion piece in El Tiempo Latino that praised school choice for providing opportunity to some American students in public schools.

"In America, a good education is the great equalizer," Speaker Boehner wrote in English and published in Spanish. "Something that gives our children the change to fulfill their potential no matter how they fared in the lottery of life."

Critics of school choice argue that charter school expansion profits the private sector and undermines public school resources while failing to accommodate the high demand for quality education. Charter schools often resort to a lottery system to choose which students to admit. Last school year, almost one million students were wait-listed for a charter school, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Many more were rejected altogether. 

In Philadelphia, about one in three students attends a charter school. The city's charter school population is larger than other Pennsylvania districts combined. Of the charter school student population in Philadelphia, 16 percent are Latino and 62 percent are African American.