Imagine a school where every child in kindergarten reads, where third graders read The Iliad, where children beg to do second drafts of their writing, where classes are small, and where teachers are chosen by the school, not assigned to it.
This was the vision dangled before inner-city parents in Jersey City, New Jersey, one evening in 1998 by a private company that runs publicly financed charter schools.
The company representatives were making their somewhat exaggerated pitch to draw students away from the standard public schools to a new charter school.
That night, hundreds of parents signed their children up, even though the school didn't have a location yet and was run by a company with a track record of just two schools, each open for only one year.
"The parents were willing to take the plunge, because while they didn't know fully what they were getting into, they knew they weren't pleased with what their children had".