As noted earlier, Sol Stern made news in the free-market community by abandoning school choice as a significant element of education reform.

Lisa Snell, of the Reason Foundation, is skeptical. After looking at recent history in several states, she concludes:

The bottom line is that content-based reform has not been a panacea in California or Indiana or even Massachusetts. Students with wealthier and higher-educated parents are thriving under a strong standards-based regiment. But content standards have had little impact on one of the most intractable of education dilemmas. It has not closed the achievement gap between lower and higher income students, where not even 50 percent of these students score proficient in reading or math.

She concludes that school choice must be an element in any widespread improvement in schooling. Snell reminds us of the record of Milwaukee--"test scores have been slowly moving up in every grade since 2004"--as well as Oakland, California, which has had some success through some school choice measures.