Writing in the Laurinburg Exchange, Karen Palasek explained that when parents buy education, they’re exercising “checkbook choice,” which involves opportunity costs just as it do purchases of other products and services. “In a market setting, whether for dining room tables or for schooling, choice is synonymous with cost – you forgo one use of your resources as soon as you commit them to another use or course of action,” Palasek wrote. Meantime, Lindalyn Kakadelis focused on education accountability in Greensboro’s News & Record and the Clay County Progress. Last year the General Assembly called for a review of the ABCs – the state’s accountability program – and while Kakadelis endorses the idea, she noted that a review wouldn’t address the core issue. “Meaningful change will take place only when legislators are prepared to open the education system to the free market. Until that time, we are left to tinker around the edges, patching an already broken system.”