Easter Monday is a good day to celebrate a resurrection story – in this case, the resurrection of a movement to rescue children trapped in failing public schools.

In a little-heralded achievement, House Speaker John Boehner used the recent spending negotiations to restore school choice in the District of Columbia — bringing back to life a program that President Obama and congressional Democrats had killed two years before. Despite the fact that students with D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program achieved graduation rates of 91 percent (more than 30 points higher than their D.C. public school peers), teachers unions and their allies in Congress were determined to smother in program in the cradle. They knew that if school choice was successful in our nation's capital, it would strengthen those fighting to establish similar programs across the country, and demand could spread like a brush fire.

The Republican Revolution of 2010 upended their plans. Indeed, the massive GOP gains not only allowed Boehner to rescue the D.C. program, they have helped set off that school-choice brush fire in the states. According to the Republican State Leadership Committee, the GOP picked up a record 690 seats in state legislatures across America last November and took governorships from Democrats in 10 states. Now, many of these newly empowered GOP state officials are pushing to create or expand school-choice programs across the country.

In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels and Republican legislators are in the final stages of enacting a bill to establish what could become the largest school voucher program in the country. The state Senate passed the bill last Thursday, and the GOP-controlled House is expected to take it up as early as this week — which means school choice could soon become law in Indiana.

Not to be outdone, in Ohio Gov. John Kasich (whose state currently has the nation's largest school voucher program) has introduced a budget that would more than quadruple the number of vouchers available to Ohio students. With Republicans now in control of both houses of the state legislature, Kasich's request stands a strong chance of approval.

In Pennsylvania, new Republican governor Tom Corbett is pushing a bill to create the state's first school voucher program that will help not only low income but also middle-class children attend private and parochial schools. Last week, busloads of children and parents descended on the state capitol to support the bill's passage, which Pennsylvania's GOP-controlled Senate is expected to vote on as soon as this week.

In Wisconsin, new Republican Gov. Scott Walker is pushing legislation to expand the nation's oldest school voucher program beyond Milwaukee, eliminate the cap on the number of students that can be enrolled and phase out income eligibility requirements. The GOP-controlled legislature began hearings on the bill last week. If Walker stands as firm on school choice as he did on collective bargaining, his proposal should become law.

Marc Thiessen is a visiting fellow at AEI