In this article, we draw on various critical perspectives to theorize neoliberal choice and examine how it has been deployed to market new educational reforms in Ontario. We begin by offering a contemporary framing of neoliberalism that looks at its core elements as well as its chameleon-like tendencies to draw on neoconservative elements as…

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ensuring culture wars, the American school choice coalition has almost completely unraveled, but many school choice advocates assert that the coalition can be rebuilt. In this essay, I argue that the school choice coalition dissolved not because of politics or circumstance, but because the…

Arthur Seldon (1916-2005) was a significant British neo-liberal economist in the second half of the twentieth century. From 1957 to 1988, as the "engine room" of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Seldon had been advocating the reform of "free" state education. He vigorously argued for education vouchers, by which each parent…

Privatization of public education in North America has long been influenced by two schools of conservative thought: neoliberalism, which seeks to create a marketplace for public services in which individuals choose the option they judge to be in their best interests and government's role is limited as much as possible to simply funding these…

Swedish compulsory schools are committed to work for equality and social cohesion. Increasing school segregation, however, challenges this commitment. Based on survey data from Swedish municipalities, this article maps and analyses local initiatives that counteract school segregation. We identify three main types of initiatives--reinforcement,…

Advocates often predict that school choice policies will expand access to high-quality schools, particularly for marginalized communities. To interrogate this assumption, we employed a sequential mixed-methods analysis examining the state of charter reform in the District of Columbia. We observed that stakeholders consistently defined equity as…

This article examines a popularized term, the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), and its underlying paradigm of neoliberalism. It elucidates neoliberalism's maddening effects on the education sector, especially public education. To analyze these effects, I draw from and adapt Michel Foucault's analytical approach to madness. My analysis…

Previous studies investigating how the school choice paradigm shapes school segregation have found that students' ethnic school preferences drive school segregation by leading students to rank and change current schools following ethnic homophily orientations. This study investigates an intermediate moment in which these preferences contribute to…

Drawing on ecological perspectives, this study investigates changes in the bilingual education of ethnic Koreans in China in the context of globalization. Focusing on two Chosonjuk (ethnic Korean in China, ?????, ???) schools in Northeast China that experienced challenges due to declining enrollment as a result of the increasing popularity of…

The United Nations has called upon Governments that are signatory to the "Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" (CRPD) to adopt practical but progressive systems to transfer resources from segregated settings/special schools into mainstream schools. What will this mean for Australia's special schools, particularly given…

Education research has often overlooked how the long durée of resistance for Black education has shaped current educational policy. We complicate notions of Black public school closures in two case studies from extensive ethnographic research in post-Katrina New Orleans through our reading of the plantation. Findings suggest these institutions…

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance…

Unified enrollment (UE) systems were designed to improve efficiency, equity, and transparency in school choice processes, but research has focused on efficiency gains. This study examines whether moving from decentralized enrollment processes to UE mitigates or exacerbates racial segregation that often occurs in choice systems. Specifically, we…

Unified enrollment (UE) systems were designed to improve efficiency, equity, and transparency in school choice processes, but research has focused on efficiency gains. This study examines whether moving from decentralized enrollment processes to UE mitigates or exacerbates racial segregation that often occurs in choice systems. Specifically, we…

In "School Rethink 2.0," editors Frederick M. Hess, Michael B. Horn, and Juliet Squire gather leaders immersed in the nuts-and-bolts work of educational reinvention to present ten promising education improvements and ways to implement them. Contributors, including acclaimed education pioneers Sal Khan, Beth Rabbitt, and Larry Berger,…