In many countries, parents have a choice of public schools. Not Japan. Here, you get just one choice: Send your child to the closest public school, or pay a lot of money for private school. But this is changing. School choice is coming to Japan.

Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward led the way in 2000, allowing parents of incoming first-graders to choose which elementary school their child would attend. A year later, the ward introduced choice for middle schools, too. Other school districts have decided to follow Shinagawa's lead. About a third of the 23 wards in Tokyo, including the one in which I live, will introduce gakko sentakusei (school choice) for the school year beginning April 2003. So will at least 16 cities and towns in other parts of Japan.

The impetus for change was a recommendation made in 1997 by an influential advisory committee to the Education Ministry. If parents make an active choice among schools, they feel more satisfied and become more involved in their children's education, the panel members said. And school choice puts pressure on schools to improve, because parents won't choose schools with problems.