When a friend bought a house in a new subdivision in California, she got to make a lot of choices: floor finish, wall color, kitchen cabinet style. Oddly, for a mother of two and owner of two dogs and four guinea pigs, she went for the white wall-to-wall in the living room.

But hey, that was her choice -- and choice is good, right?

Now, it looks like new-home buyers in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver, may get another element added to their menu of choices: schools for their kids. Developers who own thousands of acres in Aurora have developed a plan to create a network of specialized schools, perhaps even to create an all-charter district, to lure homebuyers to the developments they'd like to build on the property.

According to an article in the Denver Post, the developers have enlisted local education foundations, hired consultants, and rounded up support from local business interests for their plan. They've had conversations with the folks at Edison. What they haven't done is invited the Aurora Public School District into their planning process.

The developers learned through market research that many potential buyers are wary of the Aurora schools -- the district has fared poorly on the state School Accountability Reports. And these would-be buyers are "not too anxious to get involved" in the district, developer Norm Stuard told the Post. "Why not develop a new district to go with a new housing development? These communities are going to be much nicer than things you see built in Aurora in recent years."

Wow, great idea! Nice schools for the nice kids whose parents can afford the nice houses in the nice new subdivision. Why not go one logical step further, and develop different schools for houses with different price points? Plywood Primary for the little bitty houses on the little awkward lots, Cherrywood Academy for the nice center-hall Colonials on an acre, Marble Tower Ivy Prep for the McMansions.

Yes, this may suck the oxygen out of the struggling Aurora Public School District, but hey, it's a new era. No more fairy tales about a community taking responsibility to improve its schools for all the children, no more quaint notions about public education leveling any playing fields.

Nope, now it's clear -- whether the school your children attend is nominally public or private, you get the education you can afford. It's pretty much been that way all along, but we did have some illusions of aiming higher.

Will that be synthetic carpeting or Italian marble in the foyer, ma'am?