The concept of letting parents use government funds to cover tuition at schools of their choice has won support from a broad spectrum of theorists over a long period of time. To John Stuart Mill, Milton Friedman, Kenneth Clark, Christopher Jencks, John Chubb, Terry Moe, and Robert Reich, this approach has appealed as a vehicle of independence for families as well as a corrective to rigid public school systems unanswerable to multiple needs and interests. Yet such a market for schooling has been documented to exacerbate segregation, concentrate underperforming students in default neighborhood public schools, prompt corner-cutting by commercial school operators, fuel teaching to the test in the name of institutional distinction on league tables, and even drive grade inflation at schools worried about losing struggling students. Abundant evidence indicates that a better path to improving educational outcomes is to invest heavily in high-quality preschool, better teacher preparation and pay, smaller classes, and broader curricula encompassing more art, music, and crafts.