Proponents of school choice and school reform often claim that different school "types" will produce better academic outcomes for students than does the traditional public school model. Unstated but implicit in these views is a causal assumption that certain school types are "better" and produce improved student academic achievement, a very…

Richard Murnane observes that the American ideal of equality of educational opportunity has for years been more the rhetoric than the reality of the nation's political life. Children living in poverty, he notes, tend to be concentrated in low-performing schools staffed by ill-equipped teachers. They are likely to leave school without the skills…