Horace Mann's vision of a common school to educate American children has not been realized. Instead, our country is experimenting with many different kinds of schools: charters, independents, parochials, and magnets, to name a few. These schools fill a particular niche for families, with the potential to focus education to the needs of each child. A tour of different schools in New York City, part of a symposium on school choice, opened the eyes of the current head of an independent school to the diverse and often successful alternatives to Horace's Mann's common school created over the past decade.