If we were starting over from scratch, I think there would be a good case to be made for letting the private sector supply all the schools and having the government merely enforce mandatory-attendance laws and provide subsidies to those parents who can’t afford tuition on their own. Given that we have a vast public-school system, that we have had it for more than a century, and that it is deeply rooted in our social and political practices, proposing to get rid of it strikes me as more revolutionary than conservative.