Argues that education is a public good and cannot fit into the privatization model. It provides a critique of the first large-scale contract signed in the country by the Baltimore Public School District and a private company, Educational Alternatives, Inc., revealing political difficulties surrounding school control and dissatisfied teachers who…

Criticizes a World Bank policy paper that views private-industry provision of vocational education as an ideal toward which all countries should move, while ignoring the need for relativism in policy formation. Discusses flexibility in delivery of training, importance of general education, relevance of prevocational education, and equity issues.…

This fictional review of a book on vocational education, 1980-2033, suggests that (1) vocational educators failed to track signs of change; (2) deregulation transferred educational responsibility from the public sector to corporations with an underlying need to affect learning and work productivity. The "author's" response questions…

Contracting for noneducational services is standard operating procedure in many school districts. Private contractors are involved in transportation, food service, maintenance, and even, in rare cases, instruction. Before deciding to contract out, school boards should examine improvement to school-run operations before making a final decision.…

Many school boards have considered searching for their next superintendent in the ranks of the business community. Both Minneapolis (Minnesota) and Milwaukee (Wisconsin) have businesspeople as superintendents. Contains a number of comments concerning advantages a businessperson can bring to the superintendency, as opposed to the need for proper…

Educational Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), and others have formed a consortium, "The Alliance for Schools That Work," that seeks to manage the curriculum, maintenance and operation, and financial operations of individual schools or entire school districts. EAI's president describes how the alliance would handle the business affairs of a…

Like county governments, hospitals, and municipalities, superintendents must develop policies and protocols for requesting proposals, administering contracts, and ensuring desired results of private-sector services. Administrators should consider performance criteria, legal issues, cost and efficiency analysis, contractor evaluation criteria, and…

Suggests that the laissez-faire market principles have failed to provide quality schooling in Macau (China) and that education as a public good requires considerable state intervention. Explores schooling in Macau as a case study to indicate how public goods and private services are neither polar opposites nor mutually exclusive. (CMK)

A study investigated the attitudes of college and university employees concerning the recent privatization of dining services at three universities. Results indicate the employees saw the contractor, not the institution, as benefitting most from the changes. Employees had little understanding of the benefits of the arrangement to the university or…

In 2002, Marc Hall's principal denied him permission to take his boyfriend to his Catholic high-school prom. In examining the politicization of the ensuing prom predicament, we critique Catholicized education and what we perceive to be the Catholic Church's efforts to privatize queerness as it segregates being religious from being sexual. We…

This article starts by putting the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) into a general context of privatisation. It is noted that the privatisation process is in many cases complex and not only about full-scale privatisation of schools. The growing trade in education must be seen in this context. GATS is not an agreement which deals with…

When budgets are tight, administrators have to find ways to provide and maintain facilities without draining their budgets. Fortunately, advancements in technology, new ideas in construction and design, and savvy management strategies are available that enable schools and universities to spend their money more wisely and efficiently. Here are 10…

Research findings in England suggest that increased competition among schools, if combined with performance management, may enhance schools' efficiency. But, to prevent greater inequality in access to good quality state education, care must be taken with the regulations governing school admissions and the incentives for schools to admit and retain…

Although the driving philosophy underpinning British educational reform since 1988 has emphasized "quality" and "choice," few governmental pronouncements have addressed equity issues. This article defines "equity," focusing on distributional equity as a framework for examining reforms such as formula funding,…

This article discusses the impact of resource reallocation by colleges and universities using Virginia Commonwealth University as an example. Alternative areas for creative reallocations noted include increased productivity/efficiency, quality improvement, growth by substitution, targeted fund raising, planned savings, categorical funding, tuition…