Since the 1980s, community development in Australia has become professionalized and operates in a milieu of deregulation and privatization. Development workers struggle with questions of integrity and compromise and the contradictory pulls of modernism and postmodernism. (SK)

This article analyzes Chicago's new Renaissance 2010 school plan to close public schools and reopen them as choice and charter schools. Grounding the analysis in participatory research methods, the authors argue that Chicago's education accountability policies have laid the groundwork for privatization. They furthermore argue that Renaissance 2010…

The authors of the articles in this issue have provided a descriptive, analytic view of the politics of privatization, not a normative one. They have elected to view privatization more as a basic tool of government, with both uses and limitations, than strictly as an issue of ideology. Through their examination of the nexus between privatization…

This article is a compilation of the views of 16 PhD students and the author on Steven Klees' 2007 article titled, "A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: Misleading analyses and failed policies." The students and the author have taken Klees' article as a stimulus to try and explicate the anatomy of the decline of the…

This article presents a reply to "Edison Is the Symptom, NCLB Is the Disease" by Peter Campbell--a critique that portrayed the school as an exploitative environment, a veritable plantation subjugating poor minority children through mind-numbing, compliance-inducing drills. The author refutes the specific charges leveled against…

Explores the ideas and policies behind the movement toward privatization, and traces the history of information privatization during the Reagan administration. A discussion of privatization of government information focuses on attempts to privatize NTIS (National Technical Information Service), and differences between print and electronic…

In this essay, the author suggests that worldwide disasters are providing the means for business to accumulate profit. From the Asian tsunami of 2005 that allowed corporations to seize coveted shoreline properties for resort development to the multi-billion dollar no-bid reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the privatization of…

The Russian entrepreneur faces major obstacles to any long-term business venture, including hyperinflation, ineffective or missing legal procedures, infrastructure problems, and corruption in government and private sectors. Encouragement of entrepreneurial enterprise formation may help creative Russians help the country find its own prosperity.…

Provides case studies and data from the major telecommunications service providers in most of the industrialized countries. Discusses reasons for the persistence of monopolies and the difficulty of affecting organizational change. Looks at privatization, challenges facing the workforce, and new job opportunities that would result. (JOW)

The three major players in the current efforts to privatize schools are the following companies: Education Alternatives, Inc., the Edison Project, and Public Strategies Group Inc. Explanations of their programs include core competencies, economic capability, technological capability, and strategic capability. (MLF)

This paper presents the most notorious decentralization and privatization policies of education delivery included in the 1995-2005 education reform plan and briefly explains some of the factors justifying their existence, potential success, and possible limitations. It also examines the capacity of a privatization strategy, contracting…

Today, public services are often delivered by purchase-of-service agreements, privatization, franchising, vouchers, or other alternatives to civil service. Public personnel managers must now deal with broader policy issues, relationships with external organizations, and tighter focus on cost control, requiring new knowledge, skills, and abilities.…

Discusses respective roles and responsibilities of public and private sectors in corrections field. Describes service contracting and use of private sector for rehabilitation programs carried out in community. Maintains the importance of assuring accountability and assessing the value of services, and the legitimacy of cooperation and…

David A. Bennett served as an urban public school administrator for 20 years but is now president of Education Alternatives, Inc., a company dedicated to the concept of private management of public schools. Bennett proposes administering schools as public utilities--private management with public regulatory control. (MLF)

Privatization undermines the role of public education in keeping democracy alive, offering consumerism as the only form of citizenship. Challenging the encroachment of corporatism is essential if democracy is to remain the defining principle of education and society. (SK)