During the period of 1981 to 2015, the total population of Black students in CPS plummeted from close to 240,000, 60% of all CPS students, to 156,000 or 39% of CPS. This paper documents how despite their decreasing numbers and percentage in the system, the vast majority of Black students remained isolated in predominantly low-income Black schools…

Amid the growth of charter schools, autonomous schools, and private management organizations, an increasing number of urban districts are moving toward a portfolio management model (PMM). In a PMM, the district central office oversees schools that operate under a variety of governance models. The expansion of PMMs raises questions about local…

Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of…

This commentary explores the so-called global "crisis" in education and the corresponding pressures and moves to "reform" education, and in particular, public education. The myths underpinning and driving these developments are examined. Supposed problems with (public) education and proposed solutions are explored. The…

The article challenges the deficit view in which education in the Arab region is portrayed by examining the process of educational regionalisation. It takes as its case study the Arab Regional Agenda for Improving Educational Quality in order to explore the construction of an educational quality space that uses data as a governance model. Drawing…

Using a critical ethnographic perspective, I describe how social scientists actively transition into the evaluation industry in a reform environment that is marked by increased privatization of all aspects of public education. I do this by exploring adaptations that contract evaluators use to enhance a sense of personal connection to their work…

The basic foundation of policy making had undergone profound shifts over the past two decades as the policy makers are inclined to rely heavily on the exercise of power in their pursuit of development and prosperity. Government interventionism was subject to a strong intellectual and political backlash, and a new ideological movement seeking to…

Corporate school reform is a global movement that is gaining a growing momentum. Central to this reform agenda is "personalized learning," presented by its advocates as a better alternative to the traditional model of schooling. In spite of its appealing possibilities for education and society, scholars in countries such as the United…

"Principled Resistance: How Teachers Resolve Ethical Dilemmas" brings together senior scholars and activist teachers to explore the concept of resistance as a necessary response to mandates that conflict with their understanding of quality teaching. The book provides vivid examples of the pedagogical, professional, and democratic…

Public education is becoming increasingly privatized as private philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and corporations, such as Pearson, dominate the policy-making process, and more students enroll in publicly funded but privately administered charter schools. The privatization of education results from the…

The paper locates the past two decades of changes in Polish universities in a comparative European context. It shows a wider transition: from an expanding, privatized and disciplinarily divided university of the 1990s to a publicly funded, increasingly contracting and stratified university of the 2000s (and beyond). The gradual political and…

In this article, the author explores the way that neo-liberalism is becoming more entrenched in the fabric of the education system in England. The article begins by setting out a very brief historical trajectory of neo-liberalism to provide a working definition of a complex and disarticulated socio-political and economic system. In part two, this…

The idea of breaking free from outdated ideas and practices is nothing new. It is an idea advocated by individuals like Aristotle, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. In 1935 Dewey asserted that he viewed education and schooling as the ideal setting for democracy's gestation. He believed that a democratic way of life could best be achieved by…

In statehouses and cities across the country, battles are raging over the direction of education policy--from the standards that will shape what students learn to how test results will be used to judge a teacher's performance. Students and teachers, in passive resistance, are refusing to take and give standardized tests. Protesters have marched to…

Bangladesh's post-secondary education has become a hunting ground for local economic conglomerates and their transnational allies. Applying a holistic lens helps to understand the factors and short-term effects of blindly applying neo-liberal induced deregulation and privatization that constructed a mushrooming "McDonaldization" culture…