National School Choice Week, an annual event that coordinates thousands of events nationwide designed to bring attention to alternatives to traditional public K-12 education, runs through Saturday, January 26 (go here for more information). For today's Reason Podcast, Nick Gillespie spoke with the group's president, Andrew Campanella, about the remarkable growth of school choice over the past few decades, especially since the introduction of charter schools in the mid-1990s.

About 10 percent of the nation's 50 million K-12 students attend a school they choose rather than the traditional method of residential assignment, says Campanella, who notes that the trend is getting stronger every year. In a wide-ranging conversation about the different forms of school choice, he argues that school choice is part of a wider societal movement toward increasing personalization in many goods and services and a reflection of the recognition that education is one of the central ways for people to realize their potential.