In "The Privateers," Josh Cowen lays bare the surprising history of tax-funded school choice programs in the United States and warns of the dangers of education privatization. A former evaluator of state and local school voucher programs, Cowen demonstrates how, as such programs have expanded in the United States, so too has the…

There are competing popular beliefs about whether education reform is a fundamentally bipartisan or conservative movement. Yet, despite the popularity of these prevariling depictions, there has been minimal effort expended toward systematically observing the political beliefs of the key players in the education reform movement. I gauge the…

Charter schools continue to grow in influence, as does the push for inclusive education for students with disabilities. What is the value and impact of these schools, especially on the marginalized populations they often serve? Relying on the fields of DisCrit, and Sociology of Special and Inclusive Education, this book answers these questions by…

In recent years, districts have paid special attention to the common practice of "district hopping," families bending geographic school assignment rules by sending a child to a school in a district where the child does not formally reside-usually to a district that is more desirable because of higher performing schools or greater…

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…

One of the claims asserted by advocates of the privatized school choice model is that Traditional Public Schools (TPSs) have failed in their efforts to ameliorate social inequalities for underserved populations. School choice models that support privatization and competition are typically associated with the idealization of market efficiencies, as…

Privatisation of public services education is a key feature of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), where policy convictions, ideas, and strategies are integral to the "spreading and mutating" of reforms. While there are important projects that seek to describe and explain major changes to restructuring, ownership and funding,…

Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. secretary of education, is a strong proponent of allowing public education dollars to go to private schools through vouchers, which enable parents to use public school money to enroll their children in private schools, including religious ones. Vouchers are advanced under the rubric of "school choice"--the…

Education systems around the world are now witness to a variety of educational changes and improvements, numerous social and economic disruptions, and the onset of rapid technological advances that were unimaginable in the past. Within this tsunami of change, innovative teaching and learning practices that employ emerging technologies are sweeping…

School choice policies and the movement to privatize education have become the currently preferred school reform methods on both the state and federal levels under the guise they will provide equal educational opportunities and access for all students. The 1954 school desegregation decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" arguably paved…

This article outlines different forms of education privatization operating globally, examines their prevalence within the United States, and analyzes whether student marginalization and segregation occurs at the local level. We analyze six U.S. districts with higher saturation levels of charter schools, the most predominant type of privatization…

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…

In 1955, Milton Friedman authored a foundational paper proposing a shift in funding and governance mechanisms for public K-12 schools, suggesting that parents be awarded tuition vouchers that they could use to pay for private sector education services for their children, rather than relying on government provided neighborhood schools. Friedman…

This paper analyses the provision of education in Argentina in systemic terms. Using the concept of quasi-monopoly and the notions of exit, voice and loyalty, we study the logic of organization and distribution of students within the educational system. We support the idea that the provision of private and public education makes a coherent whole,…

In this article Huriya Jabbar examines how the regulatory environment in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans has influenced choice, incentives, and competition among schools. While previous research has highlighted the mechanisms of competition and individual choice--the "invisible hand"--and the creation of markets in education, Jabbar…