More than 1 in 3 Americans say that they support the option, and a cottage industry of private companies is growing up to service it. Public education has seen reform waves before. Nineteenth-century reformers created public schools as a way to make good citizens out of waves of new immigrants. At the turn of the 20th century, Progressive Era reformers and business allies created professional associations and an ethos of the expert. Courts and social movements in the 1960s and '70s added demands for desegregation, bilingual education, multiculturalism, and programs for gifted children and those with disabilities.
Achievement is profit.
Above all, competition in education means measurement. The good reform includes performance goals and is data driven. Washington parent Angelia Orr is just beginning to think of herself as a consumer. Sending her daughter, Ashley, to a better school outside the District was never an option, nor was paying tuition at a private school. But then she saw an ad on a bus for new charter schools and started to make some calls.