Stand and Deliver Revisited:
We can complain about the public schools and abandon them to their fate. But what can we learn from the successes? It seems to me that the system needs to be fixed, not abandoned. By abandon public schools we risk building an even higher wall between the haves and have-nots in our society when we should be tearing that wall down.

In the real world, those who provide a service can usually find a way to get it to those who want it, even if their current employer disapproves. If someone feels that he can build a better mousetrap than his employer wants to make, he can find a way to make it, market it, and perhaps put his former boss out of business. Public school teachers lack that option.

There are very few ways to compete for education dollars without being part of the government school system. If that system is inflexible, sooner or later even excellent programs will run into obstacles.