Policy Implications of the Public and Private School Debates

We are indebted once again to James Coleman for enlivening educational policy debates with the publication of this controversial and widely discussed study. Public and Private Schools (PPS), coauthored with Thomas Hoffer and Sally Kilgore, is controversial,timely, challenges the conventional wisdom, and adopts a critical—some would say hostile—stance toward public education. Although I disagree with many of their arguments,the authors should be congratulated for providing so much grist for our analytic mills.