Adding a sense of urgency to that call, Michael Guerra, president of the National Catholic Educational Association and CAPE’s treasurer, recounted the closings in recent years of hundreds of private schools in central cities, affecting hundreds of thousands of students. Guerra called those schools "civic assets" and described their demise as a loss for the communities, cities, and country they served.

Spellings pledged to use her bully pulpit to promote the president’s school choice initiatives. She reminded the group of the "aggressive choice agenda" advanced and realized by the Bush administration—the D.C. voucher program being the most notable example—and said no other administration has promoted school choice so successfully.

Referring to the president’s budget proposal for $50 million for a Choice Incentive Fund, she said success for such initiatives starts at the local level with grassroots support. The fund, according to the Department of Education’s 2006 budget summary, would "provide the parents of students who attend low-performing schools with expanded opportunities for transferring their children to higher-performing public, charter, or private schools."

Similar to the opportunity scholarship program in the District of Columbia, the program would only apply to states and school districts willing to participate.