Britain’s political consensus that more and better education is the critical policy lever for addressing a host of economic and social issues is echoed daily in the United States and in countries around the world. Providing young people with an ever-increasing quantity of schooling of constantly rising quality is adduced as the key to economic competitiveness (e.g., Reich, 1992; Marshall & Tucker, 1993), equality of opportunity (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003), and civic engagement (Gutmann, 1999). In addition, governments have come to rely on schools to accomplish a variety of other goals, ranging from improving childhood nutrition (Sedlak, 1995) to limiting drug use and combating AIDS. As schools have taken on ever more diverse and ambitious goals they have emerged as the critical and in some respects, unique, site for children’s maturation and preparation for legitimate adult roles, providing an array of services that were once the province of the family, the workplace, or the church (Meyer, 2000).