This article examines equity in national systems of education in terms of differences in student outcomes, as measured by mathematics achievement scores on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The author uses four measures for assessing equity in student outcomes: (1) the strength of the relationship between student…

In the last two decades, China's education has experienced significant transformations and restructuring on account of privatization and marketization. Unlike the Mao era when the state assumed the major responsibilities in financing and providing education, individuals and families have now to bear increasing financial burdens in paying for…

This article reviews educational initiatives of state and federal government that were designed to remedy the effects of racial segregation on Black public school students in the United States after the famous "Brown v. Board of Education" decisions. Several policy and legal initiatives are reviewed, including school desegregation,…

Like many other U.S. cities, Philadelphia experienced a prolonged period of deindustrialization and job loss during the second half of the 20th century. As in other northern cities, the process of suburbanization went hand in hand with white flight, increased racial segregation of the city and its schools, and increasingly inadequate funding of…

Public higher education has undergone a process similar to that in the national polity: a one-sided struggle by those with power to shape the institution to be more market driven, more focused on what will generate (non-state) revenues, more dominated by top administrators, and less concerned about the working class and people of color. This…

The present reconfiguration of education by neo-liberal forces worldwide is taken as a basis for this essay. Drawing on examples of how this reconfiguration operates on national arenas through decisive and dishonest discourses of commoditisation and privatisation, management and efficiency, education for all and student-centred education, the…

The National Education Association (NEA) Handbook is published annually for use by Association officers, national and state staff, members, and other interested leaders in the field of education. The Association's key governance documents--including the Constitution, Bylaws, and Rules, and the Legislative Program, resolutions, policy statements,…

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)

In her zeal to advocate greater public school choice, Raywid criticizes the ASCD's "Public Schools of Choice" report unfairly. Raywid denigrates the importance of balancing public and private interests, claims that choice demands a form of rigorous social experimentation unsupported by research, and overlooks the report's positive guidance for…

Privatization of schools would abandon the nation's commitment to educational equity. Pluralism, educational excellence, and democratic governance are all at stake. A real reform and restructuring of public schools from the bottom up is underway, fundamentally questioning traditional assumptions about schooling. (SK)

The increased marketisation and privatisation of schooling in economically developing countries struggling to achieve Education for All and Millennium Development Goals warrants a focused examination of the phenomenon. However, there is little work on the nature and extent of private provision in countries that, on the one hand, are striving to…

Introduces a series of articles about Canadian educational policy issues, comparing British and Canadian policymaking milieus during the 1980s. All the papers address wide-ranging attempts to reconstruct notions of commonness alongside concessions to, and celebrations of, linguistic and cultural plurality in an uncertain, postliberal world. This…

Two systems of metaphors (laissez-faire and communitarian) have set the parameters governing the educational choice debate. Choice proponents argue that markets will make schools more efficient and egalitarian; critics view privatization as fragmenting the body politic. When institutional racism is factored in, privatization appears to further…

This article focuses on the extent to which the legislative framework and education-funding models applicable to school education in South Africa post-1994 have, in attempting to address historical inequalities, resulted in a particular form of privatisation of public education. The article sets out the extent of the autonomy available to all…

There has been a dramatic growth in private higher education in Brazil in recent years. The World Bank has promoted this expansion on the basis of the private providers' ability to ensure a rapid increase in enrolment, to improve quality through competition between institutions and to bring benefits for society at little public cost. However, the…