School choice has gained considerable popularity in recent decades as governments struggle to improve quality and reduce the cost of education by increasing competition among schools and decreasing the level of bureaucracy (Chubb & Moe, 1990). The trend towards reorganization of public service allocation for education has been a feature of public policy in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and some nations in continental Europe and Scandinavia. In the United Kingdom, the 1988 Education Reform Act adopted the "new public management" model (Ferlie, Ashburner, Fitzgerald, & Pettigrew, 1996) policy. This reform policy ushered in the creation of "markets" in education through increased parental choice and administrative autonomy of educational institutions in the form of "independent schools." These independent schools represent a public-funded/private provision model of schooling, primarily active in England, identified as "Academies" or as "Free Schools." Recent government data and research focusing on the performance of these new models of alternative schooling in England opened debates about educational quality and social equity among researchers. This article provides an overview of the origins and evolution of the independent schools in England, focusing on the Academy schools, while discussing the ongoing debates about their role and effectiveness in addressing the goals of school reform with regard to equality and social justice.