As with individuals and families, countries have resources at their disposal which can be devoted to a wide variety of endeavors. From the perspective either of individuals and families or of entire economies, resources to provide basic education are of paramount importance. Without a solid, broad-based, and modern basic education, neither the individual nor the overall economy can reach its full growth potential. Yet in the United States there is a crisis in K–12 in that the K–12 system is too expensive relative to its produced achievement outcomes. We are simply not getting the "bang for the buck" out of K–12 that other nations are enjoying.
        The K–12 system in the United States is a predominantly publicly financed and operated system, with about 90 percent of children attending a school located in their community. This is not to suggest that the problem in K–12 is simply its public orientation. In fact, it is clear that a purely private, market-based system of K–12 would not be without its shortcomings. Most important of these are the likelihood that such a system would underproduce K–12 since it is incapable of assessing the existence of and making the needed output adjustments resulting from any positive externalities in consumption that K–12 might yield. Also troubling within a purely private market system is the possibility that it would evolve in a way that leads to even greater social segregation than we now suffer.
        Where are we, then? We have a predominantly public system of K–12 that is not working well. Yet a purely private system seems to carry with it significant costs. Taken together, it seems that what we need is reform within the current system, especially reforms that are designed to take advantage of the positive elements of markets and our growing understanding of how students learn. Numerous reforms along these lines that proponents feel address the fundamental shortcomings of the existing system and which offer the hope of improved student achievement have been discussed, with some implementation. The most frequently addressed of these is a voucher program in which children in a failing local public school are allowed to enroll in another, possibly private school and take their public funding with them. The benefits of competition on which the voucher idea is based have an undeniable economic appeal since we enjoy the same benefits of competition in so many other areas of our lives. Troubling, however, are the arguments of voucher opponents who suggest that such programs would likely end up "skimming the cream" of the public school students, leaving public schools with a disproportionate share of lower-income children and children with special learning needs. Further, as with a private system, opponents of vouchers suggest that increased social stratification may be an inevitable by-product of a voucher program.
        Another area of proposed reform that gets much attention concerns funding levels in the existing public K–12 schools. Research in the area is beginning to suggest that increased funding for initiatives such as reduced class sizes and increased teacher pay can be expected to yield measurable achievement gains. This appears to be particularly true in the lower grades and for disadvantaged children.
        What can we conclude? In the United States, K–12 is broken and must be reformed to provide the high-level human capital necessary to maintain our preeminent international position into the future. However, a great deal of experimentation and analysis of those experiments must take place before definitive answers to the question of where and how reform should proceed can be reached.