Brought up in the American education system, you believe that it's OK and that it works. It was good enough for you. Right? Tinker about with it here or there, inject a bit of cash and all will be well. It's the boiling frog syndrome, unfortunately. If you were educated in a different system and you taught around the world in places like Singapore, Japan and the UK and then spent twenty years teaching in a US High School, you learn that few teachers or administrators understand that academically our High School system stutters along by comparison to systems worldwide. The data is there. Our dropout rates at college level are frighteningly high. More High School choice is just another way of re-ordering the deck furniture. By the time politicians have had the opportunity to implement their agendas, you have an educational hodgepodge and the important middle academic tier of students loses out. As an American colleague said to me once, "The US system is based on a simple premise that if you throw enough s*** at the wall, some of it sticks." This does not bode well for the future or for our democracy. Hopefully well-motived immigrant children might take up the slack!