For almost two centuries, Americans expected that their public schools would cultivate the personal, moral, and social development of individual students, create citizens, and bind diverse groups into one nation. Since the 1980s, however, a new generation of school reformers has been intent on using schools to solve the nation’s economic problems. An economic justification for public schools—equipping students with marketable skills to help the nation compete in a global, information-based workplace—overwhelmed other historically accepted purposes for tax-supported public schools.