In 2021, the government of Manitoba made their plans to reform public education overt with Bill 64. Although the legislation was withdrawn as a result of immense opposition from critically engaged Manitobans, the government did not abandon its neoliberal reform plans. Instead, the spectre of Bill 64 now lingers through a variety of new educational…

We study the role of the State in education through the most significant government periods in Argentina in the last 50 years. We use a sociocultural approach, contemplating the historical development of educational policies in the country, exploring conceptual frameworks applicable in the investigation of the State, privatization and…

This article aims to demonstrate the hazards of an education system controlled by any one group -- in this case, governments -- by examining the recent drive for the academisation of English state schools. This article highlights the need for education's independence from political control. The once 'secret garden' of the curriculum is now firmly…

The Nordic countries are often perceived as a coherent group representing the Nordic model of welfare states, with a strong emphasis on the public provision of universal welfare and a strong concern with social equality. But today we see a change in the Nordic model as part of a global knowledge economy. The aim of this article is to examine…

In September 2015, Governor Charlie Baker announced his support for raising the charter school cap in Massachusetts. This announcement has sparked a heated debate about funding for public education that problematically ignores neoliberal ideology. The "Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993" began a reign of neoliberalism impacting…

This paper aims to discuss recent changes in Portugal's education policy. Portugal offers an interesting scenario to study the different ways the economic crisis has brought new opportunities to strengthen the privatization agenda. We specifically focus on media coverage and the contractualization of education services with private schools through…

Over the last almost two decades, high-stakes testing has become increasingly central to New York's schools. In the 1990s, the State Department of Education began requiring that secondary students pass five standardized exams to graduate. In 2002, the federal No Child Left Behind Act required students in grades three through eight to take math and…

Previous empirical literature finds that government expenditure on higher education has a negative, or null, effect on U.S. economic growth rates. This empirical result may be driven by omission of an important variable--the privatization of higher education. Using state-level panel data from 1970 to 2005, this analysis investigates whether the…

The author, a former headteacher and now a county councillor, argues that the structural changes to the education system put in place in the first weeks of the new government in the summer of 2010 will exacerbate the gap between the highest and lowest achieving schools, will destabilise the state-funded education system, will expose it to…

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…

The General Agreement on Trade in Services gives priority to international commercial interests, and unless this trend is countered, public policy authority for education will shift to the World Trade Organization. While the Canadian government has stated that public education systems are not negotiable, the exclusion provisions it bases that…

This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such…

An open letter after September 11, 2001, reflects on education's role in promoting tolerance and peace. Further discussion focuses on liberal versus neoliberal ideology; the expansion and democratization of public education in the 20th century, guided by liberal public policy concerning the state's responsibility for social welfare and the public…

Countries with good education systems have good health and transportation systems and equitable access to health care and public services. One must look at education in terms of inputs, not production or outputs. When healthy, well-fed, well-housed children enter an education system that provides transportation and access to books, dictionaries,…

Explores: (1) historical incorporation of degree-granting institutions in the United States as non-profit and the role of the State in provision of non-profit higher education; (2) benefits and challenges of non-profit and for-profit organizational forms in higher education; and (3) growth in commercial or for-profit behavior in research…