In recent decades, many calls for transformative change in American schooling have advocated school choice. Yet these calls themselves have too often accepted the orthodoxies of the nineteenth-century schoolhouse. In the book Customized Schooling: Beyond Whole-School Reform (Harvard Education Press, 2011), AEI's director of education policy studies Frederick Hess worked with the Walton Family Foundation's Bruno V. Manno to offer a more promising vision for twenty-first-century, choice-centered reform. In his April 2011 Education Outlook, he highlights ways to "unbundle" education reform through offering a variety of programs for students to choose from.

The "whole school" approach to education reform has made it difficult for specialty education providers to get past bureaucratic rules and offer their services to parents, students, and teachers."Unbundling" education means offering students an assortment of services instead of an indivisible package of "education." Such services could be packaged and customized to fit specific student needs and abilities. Virtual schooling and customized educational tools are breaking the whole-school model. Consumers need information on their choices as well as funding options that allow them to choose customized services.

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