This contribution explores how multinational companies (MNCs) have managed to develop their own policy that sets international standards for education, in particular in the sphere of corporate education. It criticises education policy studies for leaving the study of corporate education mainly to management and human resource studies. As a…

In this chapter, I attempt to theorize and historize the current global education reform movement which the Finnish education policy analyst Pasi Sahlberg (Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland. Teachers College Press, New York, 2011) has coined the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement), the "virus…

This paper addresses the rise and consequences of an emerging global education industry (GEI), which represents new forms of private, for profit involvement in education across the globe. The paper explores the emergence within the GEI of new and varied, largely transnational, markets in education by focusing on three examples of the GEI at work.…

In rapidly globalizing systems of schooling around the world, economic considerations have led to a push to impose neoliberal reforms in the field of education. Under this influence early childhood education and teacher education in Asia have increasingly become positioned as regulated markets governed by neoliberal policies, leading to peak…

Pakistan suffers from an extensive education crisis. Millions of Pakistani children do not attend school, and those that do must deal with absent teachers and poor learning environments, among other challenges. While this crisis is frequently discussed in Pakistan and beyond, it is often misunderstood. This new Wilson Center report, based on…

This article deals with the issue of privatisation(s) in the field of education. In doing so, it focuses on three distinct, although interrelated, processes currently being experienced in the Italian education system: (a) the widening of the spaces for private schooling; (b) the ongoing privatisation of policy and the related blurring of the…

Educational publishing corporations and media corporations in the United States have been converging, especially through the promotion of standardization, testing, and for-profit educational technologies. Media and technology companies--including News Corp, Apple, and Microsoft--have significantly expanded their presence in public schools to sell…

Key legislative objectives for the US Federal educational policy over the past several decades relied heavily on quasi-market strategies (such as school rating, school closure, the contracting out of schools) as central levers in "reforming" public schools. Using financial data on 11 national for-profit firms contracting with schools and…

In "The Transformation of Great American School Districts", William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of…

This chapter concentrates on policies that increase the efficiency of schools rather than just more spending. The first focus is on the causes of educational inefficiency. These include lack of standards and accountability, centralization, unaccountable management and labor, federally induced inefficiency, and nonmarket inefficiency. Steps…

Controversy abounds in states and communities across the United States about how best to manage the nation's schools. Much of the current debate over school reform can be reduced to a single question: Who should decide? This report discusses some of the ways in which policymakers have attempted to give schools greater flexibility from rules and…

Education in both England and the United States has undergone a profound change over the last two decades as part of neo-liberal and neoconservative political reforms. The reforms have been characterized by efforts to standardize the curriculum, to implement standardized tests in order to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable, to…