Educational grievances made educational democratisation an important issue in the 1980s and 1990s during South Korea's democratic consolidation. Educational democratisers sought to address these through greater freedom and autonomy for teachers, students and parents combined with teacher unionisation. Some of the excesses of the highly…

This article analyses the narratives and counter-narratives which characterised the struggle between the Chicago Public School Board (CPS) and the Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU) preceding the 2019 Chicago teachers' strike. This was an extraordinary event which has received little scholarly attention. The paper explores the types and uses of the…

They show up shouting at school board meetings with endless complaints. The press interviews them as though they are "regular moms" looking out for their children, but they are not. They are a well-funded façade for the Koch, Walton, and DeVos families to disrupt and destroy public education. In our new report, author and academician…

This article investigates why school choice is exercised to a limited degree by parents despite major government initiatives to enhance diversity, competition and choice in the Danish education system. Denmark has had 20 years of centre-right governments, promoting choice reforms perhaps even more vigorously than the other Nordic countries, yet…

Improving public education has long been a cornerstone of the Democratic platform. Because progressives understand that access to a quality education is the gateway to a better life, their decades-long struggle to promote equal rights and opportunity for all Americans has been deeply tied to their struggle to create an effective public school…

Education's political landscape has shifted dramatically over the past year. To the consternation of most school-district officials, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used the bully pulpit to promote charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for private-school scholarships. To the distress of teachers unions, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down…

With the 2020 presidential election campaign now underway, education-policy proposals previously at the edge of the political debate are entering the mainstream. Support for increasing teacher pay is higher now than at any point since 2008, and a majority of the public favors more federal funding for local schools. Free college commands the…

Challenging the popular perception that the free market can objectively ameliorate inequality and markedly improve student academic achievement, this book examines the overly positivistic rhetoric surrounding charter schools. Taking a multifocal approach, this book examines how charter schools reproduce inequality in public education. By linking…

This article is a response to Kevin Donnelly's article, "The Australian Education Union: A History of Opposing School Choice and School Autonomy Down-Under," and aims to correct specific errors and misrepresentations as found by Susan Hopgood, Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union. She argues that the article is misleading…

In this article, I chronicle the recent history of efforts to broaden school choice in the Commonwealth of Australia and the opposition to these efforts put forth by Australia's largest teacher union, the Australian Education Union (AEU). Evidence is presented on the positive effects that flow from the public funding of nongovernment schools and…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

For 20 years, charter schools have held a precarious existence in Canada. Implemented in the province of Alberta in 1994, only a handful of charter schools remain in the entire nation. In this article, I explore the ideas of school choice and charter schooling and how they have largely disappeared as educational policy issues for Canadians. While…

In this paper the authors identify some of the key findings from the sixth annual "Education Next"-PEPG Survey, a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens interviewed during April and May of 2012. Highlights include: (1) the Republican tilt of the education views of independents; (2) the especially high marks that Hispanics give their…

In this article, we examine the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as an example of a unique node within larger policy networks composed of new policy entrepreneurs (e.g., venture philanthropists, think tanks, private "edubusinesses" and their lobbyists, advocacy organizations, and social entrepreneurs). These new policy…

In this timely interdisciplinary volume, William Watkins has brought together leading scholars and activists to address some of the most urgent issues facing public education. What is underneath and behind the language of choice, efficiency, and improvement in current neoliberal discourse? How will urban and poor populations be affected? Will…