Since the early 2000s, billionaires have treated the Denver Public School District as a Neo-liberal education experiment. Using a tangled web of astroturf groups, nonprofits, and training organizations, billionaires have hijacked this public school district, leaving some schools, students, and democracy behind. In this report, Denver's Mike…

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 idea of privatization of the traditional U.S. public school system is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. The growing trend towards allowing private enterprises to become active players in the development and delivery of classroom learning is assumed to be a "public good." The following commentary provides a cursory look at…

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…

To make the case for academia's engagement in knowledge mobilization and public scholarship in social media, we begin by providing a justification for the use of new technological modes for integrating scholarly endeavors. As an example, Sun Tzu's Art of War philosophy is applied to academic scholarship within the present school reform discourse…

In this speech, Hursh shows how public education in the United States is undergoing profound changes. Education policy has been hijacked by the unelected and unaccountable corporate reformers who aspire to overhaul the education system through a corporate model of privatization and market competition. They aim to privatize education through…

Throughout this article, we discuss the neoliberal assault on public education, specifically in the United States, which, through coercive means, is anti-feminist, racist, and classist and demonstrates a deliberate attack on the female-dominated teaching profession. By contextualizing and analyzing education policies through a framework of…

Since the 1970s business groups have staged the control of education, first in the form of partnerships with schools and universities to support science, math, and technology, and more recently in the form of venture philanthropy. This article examines how these business groups, including the "billionaire boys club" and their mega…

Although in plain sight daily, a highly successful war against the public schools has been hidden in the shadows of public consciousness. Only very recently have several people written articles about this war, with the only book calling it a war being written in 2002. Neither the public nor educators have become aware of the far-reaching extent…

Scholarly writing in the field of education policy analysis often considers two conflicting governance agendas: the social-democratic "public" agenda and the relatively young "neoliberal" governance agenda. These agendas are frequently described as being part of a process of transformation from public or state to private…

Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages…

According to James Harvey, the scale of the 2011 effort to privatize public education through vouchers and charters is "staggering," representing the culmination of a 30-year assault on public service in general and public education in particular. At a time when states are staring into the abyss of bankruptcy, he notes, public funds intended for…

This research brief details some of the prominent ways that individuals, companies, and organizations secure financial gain and generate profit by controlling and running charter schools. To illustrate how charter school policy functions to promote privatization and profiteering, the authors explore differences between charter schools and…

Neoliberalism has brought fundamental changes to the way schools of education prepare professional educators; among them is the pressure for schools of education to produce fast-track teacher preparation programs that bypass traditional requirements. Due to the privatization of public education, a new market has emerged to train educators and…

The task of this article is to carry out a synthetic analysis of the concept of the "educational marketplace" as it is used in the popular discourse of education reform so as to unpack what has become a commonsensical idea in American politics. It is a conceptual framework that has opened an ever-expanding sovereign space in the American state for…