Since the late 1970s, Britain has moved from a Keynesian welfare state model toward a mode of governance where economic reasoning replaces politics. Education in England has not escaped this shift from government to governance described as neoliberalism. This shift toward a new governing rationality has taken shape within the English education…

At a time of bitter national polarization, there is a critical need for leaders who can help us better communicate with one another. In "A Search for Common Ground," Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera, who have often fallen on opposing sides of the ideological aisle over the past couple of decades, candidly talk through their differences on…

In many nations around the globe, including Pakistan, education is losing ground as a public good to become another market-based commodity as the state shrinks its responsibility to schooling. This presents challenges to democratic futures, and particularly for young democratic states such as Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is pouring a…

In the light of the government's recent White Paper, we outline the history of the academisation programme, positioning it as part of the neo-liberal privatisation drive which has been sustained since the 1988 Education Reform Act under governments of all stripes. We contest central claims made for the supposed benefits of academisation, and call…

While much literature has been produced on globalization, privatization, and the State individually, it has not been common to treat them together, at least not in the field of comparative and international education. There is excellent work that has documented the ways in which globalization and privatization have influenced education reform, but…

Symbolic of the rise of neoliberal principles in Irish education policy, there is now a move towards advancing school autonomy and decentralizing decision-making to individual schools, possibly emulating the academy model that has become widespread in England. Increasing the freedom and independence of schools may involve using private actors to…

This article examines the ways in which teachers and community-based activists collaborated to advance an anti-privatisation agenda within an urban school district. The article emerges from our respective studies of privatisation in Oakland, one a historical study of the advance of neoliberalism and the other a case study (Merriam 2007,…

Privatization of education has become a prevalent global trend, representing a significant shift from viewing education as a public good to considering it as a private commodity. This transformation is closely tied to the modernization of the state under the principles of neoliberalism. A comprehensive analysis, as presented in this book using…

In the last few decades, the Chinese higher education system has changed considerably from an elitist model to a massified one with public and "minban"/transnational provisions. Accordingly, this study sets out against the context of higher education expansion initiated in late 1998 to critically examine the major trends of non-state…

This article identifies new arrangements between the state and non-state actors in the public sector, one that extends current understandings of education privatisation, the transformation of public services 'by substitution' and, specifically theories of the 'shadow state'. Drawing on data from the Political Economy of Teacher Education (PETE)…

Controversy is intensifying with the rapid spread of charter schools and their domination of the education reform agenda. As charter enrolment increases in the USA, inequities in education worsen. This article contributes to the debate on contemporary education policy by critically examining charter issues from the US literature and stakeholder…

This article sets out to demonstrate the considerable extent to which the New Zealand school system has become saturated by private interests, and to explain this development over time. It is the first such overview of the privatisation of schooling in the New Zealand context. The analysis illustrates that the rise of private actors has involved…

The lesson to be learnt from a quarter of a century of resisting standardised testing is that educational and pedagogical issues must drive campaigning. Teachers must work together to re-establish confidence in their own ability to control the curriculum and what is offered to our children. This can only be a collective enterprise and teachers…

The gradual restructuring of the political economy of Turkey after the 1980s has changed the positioning of the middle class and the importance of its social, economic, and cultural capitals. In particular, lowering the quality of public education through systematic privatization and Islamisation has constituted a significant threat to this class'…

Perennial iterations of Olympic Games, and the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) contractual obligations upon host cities, have prompted development of wide-ranging educational initiatives. Such initiatives draw on the moral idealism of Olympism underpinning the IOC and focus on sport and Physical Education (and other subject areas) as sites…