The conventional wisdom about public schools is that they face serious problems in terms of performance and that improving schools requires additional money. However, the available evidence suggests that there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters. Furthermore, there is little reason to believe that schools will move toward more efficient operations, either on their own or through consumer pressures. More attention should be given to developing direct performance incentives.