This paper addresses aspects of alternative proposals taking place in the public education system, based on an anthropological, ethnographic, comparative study of alternative schools and educational projects in Catalonia. More specifically, it first explores educational change in Catalonia through time and on the present, with a special focus on the public sector, stressing its historical dimension and the process of its current depoliticization. Then, based on a specific ethnographic case and on daily dynamics of exclusion, school choice and parental involvement, attention is drawn to aspects of the privatization of educational innovation and the reproduction of inequalities. It is argued that, apart from a first-level educational segregation due to economic resources, a second level appears that divides families according to cultural criteria. In the end, the potential for social transformation such education proposals hold is highlighted, along with a few factors that would facilitate its unfolding.