NAMLE was founded (as the Alliance for a Media Literate America) 10 years ago with a mission "to expand and improve the practice of media literacy education in the United States." There have been many successes since then, and some disappointments. The expansion of media literacy education into schools has fallen into the latter category, with modest and growing numbers of teachers and library media specialists on board, but far short of the organization's vision of universal media literacy education in the U.S. There are varied and complex reasons for the slow embrace of media literacy education by U.S. schools. Some obvious explanations include overt political resistance, narrow focus on high stakes testing mandates, continuing lack of access to media technologies, and lack of professional development and preservice training. This essay explores a few of the less obvious reasons and discusses some areas for improvement in media literacy education, including the need for ML scholars and practitioners to reach out to educational institutions and to use inquiry-based pedagogical methods. (Contains 6 endnotes.)