Making up our mind: what school choice is really about

Introduction

School choice today

Not your parents' schooling

Design trade-offs

What follows

Historical reflections on school choice. Original choices ; An educational ecology emerges ; Between Rome and Albany ; Rebels with causes ; Choosing neighbors and schools ; Brown: crawling past plessy ; The bus stops here ; Experimental visions ; Toward plural public education ; From plural visions to bounded choices ; Federal support shifts from magnets to charters

The value of choice: a normative assessment. Whose education is it? ; Private options for education consumers ; Schools for the public, by the public ; Can parents be effective education consumers? ; Labs for innovation, or unaccountable "ghost districts"? ; Choice through privatization supports innovation ; The limits of innovation ; Limits of accountability through private choice ; Accountability through transparency ; Accountability through participation ; Accountability through sanctioning ; Accountability through resistance ; Equal access to quality education, or another layer of separation? ; Choice provides equal access to quality education ; Choice creates another layer of inequality and separation ; Higher-quality education? ; Equal access to quality education? ; New layers of separation

Conclusion: making up our collective mind.