President Truman is said to have wished that his advisers had only one arm-so he didn't have to repeatedly hear, in response to his policy questions, "on the one hand this, and on the other hand that."

Half a century later, a phalanx of "one-armed" policy analysts are plying their trade in free-market-oriented think tanks. For these analysts and their think-tank sponsors, privatization is the preordained solution for each new educational problem. Indeed, time spent reading their reports l...