views of what he thought was wrong with today's schools, compared
with schools during his days as a student, and used it to further his
fundamentalist-based campaign against public schools. The list has
since evolved into treasured folklore presented as truth. More scientific
polls--largely ignored in the education debate--indicate that the big-
gest problems faced in classrooms are discipline and safety and that
these have remained largely unchanged. The creation and perpetuation
of the school-list myth have been closely examined in a 1994 essay by
Barry O'Neill. ¹ He concludes that the list--there are several ver-
sions--represents a "collective moan of anxiety over the gap between
ideals and reality" ( O'Neill 1994, 49). It also demonstrates how readily
myth can replace reality in the volatile arena of public education.

Identifying and agreeing on educational problem--let alone solu-
tions--is very difficult, but that does not stop people from trying. If
facts are not available, or do not fit ideological preconceptions, they
are ignored or, as in the case of the school lists, simply made up. Any
number of scholars, politicians, and a legion of self-described educa-
tion "experts" have joined the fray of the education debate, quoting
highly subjective "evidence" such as the school list to support their
positions. Barricaded behind thick walls of ideology, views limited by
selective perceptions, and armed with carelessly handled reports and
studies, many participants in the education debate seem to be more
intent on defending folklore than exploring reality.

At the center of the education debate is a reform effort that emerged
from the 1980s with growing strength: school choice. Depending on
who is asked, school choice is either the savior of America's decaying
education system or another myth on a par with the school list that is
just as false and much more dangerous. The idea behind school choice
is to create an education marketplace where students or parents could
choose school services, and their educational tax dollars would be
allocated accordingly. Students will demand higher educational qual-
ity, and in the name of financial and institutional survival, schools will
supply the same. To back this claim, there is theory, ideology, and
even an empirical study or two.

The purpose of this book is an objective analysis of school choice.
But before we started examining policy and crunching numbers, we
thought it would be good to ground ourselves in reality by venturing
into nearby classrooms. As the rhetoric demonstrates, diagnoses of the
problems with schools and prescriptions to cure them are often not

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