Washington is at crossroads on K-12 education policy. It can continue down the path of top-down accountability; devolve power to states and districts, thereby returning to the status quo of the last century; or rethink the fundamentals and do something different. In Choice and Federalism: Rethinking the Federal Role in Education, the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education proposes a new path in which Washington releases states from top-down accountability in exchange for unleashing the ability of parents to engage in informed choices of schools for their children and by causing those choices to generate competitive pressures on the providers of education services.

"Expanding Choice in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education" presents a seemingly egalitarian prescription for the federal government to expand school choice. An examination of the arguments and evidence for increasing choice, however, reveals at least three important shortcomings. First, the authors tend to overuse research that is still in progress and research produced by advocacy organizations and think tanks, leading them to be overly optimistic about particular school choice reforms' effects on educational achievement, access and equity. The second oversight is the neglect of important scholarship, causing the authors to fail to acknowledge the complex social and political dynamics informing parental choice processes as well as choice schools' practices that limit and shape their student enrollments. A third shortcoming emerges from this omission: the authors do not sufficiently consider issues of diversity, including the social categories of race, ethnicity, special education, and English Learners. They fail to acknowledge that some school choice reforms have had segregative effects. As such, in the singular pursuit of their goal to universally expand school choice the authors miss an opportunity to affirm the federal role in ensuring the creation of diverse, equitable, and high-quality choice schools that would produce individual and societal benefits. (Contains 22 notes.) [This paper reviews the following document: "Expanding Choice in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education" (ED508201).].