Everyone agrees that the American education system is broken; no one seems to agree on how to fix it. Some of the solutions offered alter our basic assumptions about public education. In a turn of events perhaps unimaginable forty years ago when Brown v. Board of Education was decided, some advocates for people of color are now questioning whether integration furthers or frustrates the provision of quality public education. Advocates of “voucher” systems and privatization go still further to question whether public education itself is a good thing. In this climate, advocates for equitably distributed public education must be prepared to defend not just their strategies, but the very premises of their arguments.

In February 1994, Schoolhouse Rocked: Reevaluating and Reforming Public Education, the New York University Review of Law and Social Change colloquium on education reform, brought together panels of scholars, lawyers, educators, parents, and students from a wide variety of back-grounds to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the debates:equitable school financing and single sex and single-race schools. This colloquium issue includes speeches and articles by colloquium participants which capture their debate about the pressing questions facing education reformers today.