The criteria by which the book compares educational approaches are outlined in the Introduction. They represent, in essence, our widely cherished ideals of public education: universal access, equality of educational opportunity, promotion of social cohesion, bolstering participation in public life, etc. Omitted from this list are the more immediate demands and expectations that parents have for their own children's education, such as mastery of fundamental academic skills, career preparation, and religious instruction. The decision to leave aside these demands is explained by noting that some advocates of state-schooling do not grant that parents have a right to decide what their children are taught. For this and other reasons, Reclaiming Education initially eschews the use of statistics on academic performance as a proper basis for evaluating education systems. Tooley writes:

The minimization of academic test results in particular and of parental demands in general is unfortunate. A more comprehensive approach might have been for Reclaiming Education to treat the opinions of the two groups with equal favor by evaluating education systems based on how well they served both the individual needs of families and the broader social goals he has chosen as his benchmarks. Educationists who did not believe in parents' rights could simply ignore the sections treating parental demands.

Fortunately, Reclaiming Education ends up doing nearly that. At several points in the book, Tooley does touch upon academic performance and other issues of direct interest to parents, as these discussions often arise in relation to one or more of the social outcome criteria identified in his Introduction.

Tooley applies his criteria with an engaging combination of philosophy and empiricism. To provide clarity and detail to the issues at hand, he presents a series of imaginary focus-group discussions akin to updated Socratic dialogues. The conclusions of these very readable discussions are then tested against the evidence of the real world, by drawing on international and historical precedents documented by the author himself as well as by other scholars.

Throughout the book, Tooley uses this effective dual approach to determine whether state-run educational systems or free educational markets are better able to satisfy the criteria he has laid out. Nor is there any confusion over what is meant by an educational market. One of the great hallmarks of Reclaiming Education is that it sets out from the beginning exactly what the author means by an educational market. On page 11, Tooley offers this five part definition:

1. No state provision
2. No state funding (except perhaps for targeted indirect funding for the poor)
3. Relatively minimal regulation
4. Relatively easy entry for new suppliers
5. A price mechanism

Reclaiming Education further clarifies the idea of an educational market by distinguishing between businesses whose sole mission is to provide educational services, and those that simply try to use schools to promote their brands and products. Tooley states his own opposition to the second sort of business, and indicates that his focus is entirely on the former sort. Though it is not mentioned in Reclaiming Education, attempts at commercializing the curriculum by the second sort of business are almost exclusively a problem in the public sector, being virtually unknown in schools operated privately.

Tooley's discussion of the relative merits of educational markets versus government school systems is wide ranging, and it would be impossible to mention here every aspect of that discussion. However, there are certain points on which Reclaiming Education offers such exceptional coverage that they bear special mention.

One of the most commonly heard assertions regarding public schooling is that it is accountable to the public, whereas independent educational institutions are not. This belief has been challenged by a host of authors, but nowhere is it more ably rebutted than in Reclaiming Education. Tooley begins by distinguishing between the political accountability touted by advocates of state schooling, and the more direct accountability of the marketplace. He goes on to show the toothless quality of political accountability when compared to market accountability and demonstrates the superflousness of the political sort when the market sort is available.

Reclaiming Education takes on another shibboleth of the status quo by explaining how and why it is all but impossible to bring about widespread and lasting improvement within the public school system. Rebuking those who suggest that the government education monopoly can reform itself he writes: "Trying to get state education to change itself will be like trying to get turkeys to vote for [Thanksgiving]." This pithy analogy is followed by a rigorous discussion with concrete examples showing government schooling's resistance to change.

Also excellent are the discussions on the virtues of for-profit education (p. 19, 112, & 197), the failure of government efforts to achieve educational equality (p. 83), the value of branding in ensuring high and uniform quality (p. 85, 130-1).

In a few cases, however, significant bits of evidence are overlooked in Reclaiming Education. Fortunately, these would only have served to further strengthen the author's arguments. The discussion on social cohesion (p. 94-95), for example, would have benefited from a discussion of the consistently divisive effects of state education monopolies throughout history. The treatment of politicization of the curriculum (p. 145) might have been more viscerally effective with a few more examples from the perennial US "school wars" between right and left wing individuals and organizations.

In pages 133 through 137, Tooley takes on the invalid argument that, because some parents will make worse educational decisions than others for their children, the state must intervene. His case is well presented, but would have been stronger had he emphasized more explicitly that this argument fallaciously presupposes that the state can and will make consistently better decisions. He might have pointed to the historical and modern evidence showing that this is a totally unjustified assumption, and that, throughout history, parents of all income levels have generally made better decisions for their own children than state-appointed "experts" have made on their behalf.

While treating the issue of education for citizenship, Reclaiming Education shows how state mandates in this area invariably inject opinions on contentious issues, and that this is actually harmful to the democratic process (p. 148), and precipitates a tyranny of the majority (p. 165). What the book does not mention is University of Texas at Austin professor Jay Greene's findings showing higher political and civic participation among graduates of private schools, even after accounting for socio-economic factors. And while the book notes that government control over the curriculum does a poor job of fostering democracy (p. 170)., it does not stress enough that such control actually leads to inevitable social conflict.

Among the greatest contributions of Reclaiming Education is that it provides one of the most thoughtful prescriptions for action available anywhere. Unlike the vast majority of works on school governance and education policy, this book does not restrict itself to legislative solutions. Tooley provides a range of practical actions that can be undertaken by individual parents, citizens, and education service providers in order to bring about educational excellence without reliance on the state.