Doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results is a sign of insanity, but what really defines the plaintiffs is banality. This is about the control of schools by bureaucrats, about work rules negotiated by unions and, not least, about money -- not allowing any to flow away from the usual channels.

The public school lobby, which apparently has little confidence in its product, lives in fear of competition -- the fear that if parents' choices are expanded, there will be a flight from public schools. But the tide is turning:

Newark's Mayor Cory Booker, a member of the board of the national Alliance for School Choice, proposes a scholarship program similar to Arizona's. New Jersey corporations could get tax credits totaling $20 million a year collectively for scholarships for low-income students in five cities with especially troubled schools.

New York's new Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, proposes lifting the cap that restricts the state to a mere 100 charter schools. This common-sense idea -- lowering a barrier the government has erected to limit innovative schools that compete with the government's existing system -- is welcome, but not as bold as what Mayor Michael Bloomberg is doing with the nation's largest school system, New York City's, with 1.1 million pupils.

He is dividing large schools into smaller ones, emancipating many principals to be educational entrepreneurs under a system that holds them accountable for cognitive results. The logic of Bloomberg's reforms is that public money should follow wherever students are attracted by competing schools. So school choice is gaining ground in the city that has historically been ground zero for collectivist, centralizing liberalism.