As challenges to U.S. democracy proliferate, public schools have been caught up in the controversies. Columnist Robert Kim explains that the challenges to both public education and democracy are not new. These attacks occur on multiple fronts, involving funding, equity, and curriculum. And efforts to respond to the threats will require various…

"A World of Private Higher Education" is the definitive treatment of a sector accounting for a third of the world's 200 million higher education enrolment--yet remaining largely unknown even to scholars of higher education and widely mis-characterized when it is considered by stakeholders or the general public. Beyond the eye-popping…

The time is ripe to reexamine the social contract between higher education and society. Historically, the social contract has promised an advancement of the public good through applied knowledge production and thoughtful research dissemination, training citizens to lead and actively participate in democracy, and supporting local and global…

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different…

In a globally austere policy context, state financing of public services has been positioned as perennially "in crisis" with private intervention a positive solution. There is a general assumption -- in education policy and practice -- that philanthropic donations can be a solution to reduced public funding of schooling. While much…

Drawing upon a long-term study of venture philanthropy and public schools in Australia, this paper focuses on Teach For Australia (TFA) as a major component of a venture philanthropic network, one that builds critical infrastructures and connections between non-government organisations and the state, creating a product pipeline into public…

For decades, there has been a well-coordinated effort to unmake public education in Canada and around the globe. Neoliberal reformers have undermined public education through increased privatization, marketization, and managerialism. Government austerity measures have shaped policy that falsely necessitates, validates, and legitimizes the…

Most of the literature in educational research, and in philosophy of education specifically, has been clearly appealing to hope in its various forms, in attempts to bring it back, improve it and have more of it. This paper wishes to explore a different terrain. I ask whether there can be a worthwhile education that does not require hope, and I…

Those working toward equitable K-12 computing education in the United States have always had their work cut out for them: understanding how best to teach, developing robust curricula, designing novel tools, building teacher capacity, and supporting systemic change in schools to bring equitable computing education to young people. Collectively,…

Power, privilege, and prejudice are embedded within technologies. While technologies can be designed and used for democratization and empowerment, they can also be used to undermine the foundations of democracy in a variety of ways. Using a conceptual framework of technologically embedded injustice, the authors engaged in a theoretical analysis of…

Adults' beliefs and knowledge about the state of the U.S. education system drive decisions about policy, funding, program adoption, student participation in programs, and the selection of decision makers to elected positions. Amie Rapaport and Anna Rosefsky Saavedra share national survey data showing that U.S. adults have little knowledge about…

Since the early 2000s, billionaires have treated the Denver Public School District as a Neo-liberal education experiment. Using a tangled web of astroturf groups, nonprofits, and training organizations, billionaires have hijacked this public school district, leaving some schools, students, and democracy behind. In this report, Denver's Mike…

From climate disaster to the specter of nuclear annihilation to the rise of fascism and destruction of democracy to the advent of AI and other potentially destructive technologies, a number of material threats are matched by symbolic threats that undermine the capacities of people to respond. The war on public and critical education and the public…

Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

This comparative study traces the foundation and development of vocational and career guidance services in three Central and Eastern European countries in the light of the contextually bound factors of this region. Since the beginning of the 20th century, political transitions and changes in the ruling structures in these countries were so…