Educational publishing corporations and media corporations in the United States have been converging, especially through the promotion of standardization, testing, and for-profit educational technologies. Media and technology companies--including News Corp, Apple, and Microsoft--have significantly expanded their presence in public schools to sell…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced the No Child Left Behind Act with great fanfare and enthusiasm. Granting more power to states and curbing what was seen as federal overreach was well received. However, the new legislation maintains a predominately test-based accountability system with a federal mandate for interventions in well over…

In this article, the author explores the neoliberal impacts on higher education in Bangladesh, how market-driven policies might limit the education of arts, humanities and social sciences, and whether or not this phenomenon may have consequences for the future of democracy in the country. First, the author focuses on the privatisation of higher…

Early in 2011, the Government initiated a consultation on the potential sale of the Public Forest Estate in England. This proposal leads to vociferous negative public reaction and the consultation was withdrawn and an Independent Panel established. This paper reviews the arguments as to the options and appropriate institutional arrangements for…

Educators and policy observers are keeping a close eye on two controversial experiments in private management of public schools now unfolding in the western Michigan city of Muskegon Heights and in the Detroit-area community of Highland Park. Citing chronic budget woes in the communities' low-performing school districts, Gov. Rick Snyder of…

ISCHE 33 was convened in San Luis Potosi to re-examine a relationship--that between society, education and the state--that had been largely taken for granted in official histories of education of modern nations. This theme was inspired by the bicentenary celebrations of the relatively early nineteenth-century movements (from 1804 to 1824) that…

This article examines youth protests against education privatization in the post-Soviet countries of Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine. Drawing on a sample of online sources and scholarly articles, this study uses critical discourse analysis and visual methodologies to examine why and how post-Soviet university students have organized to protest against…

The privatisation of state education in a variety of ways has introduced a range of risks to school governance and management which have not previously existed in the public service. State-funded education is in danger of losing its standing on the moral high ground as a public good delivered almost exclusively by individuals committed to ethics…

"Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law" is the first full-length critical study examining the impact of the dramatic reforms that have swept through universities over the last two decades. Drawing on extensive research and interviews in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada, Margaret Thornton considers the impact of the…

The author founded Greater Newark Charter School in 2000 at a time when charter schools were little more than a nuisance to the traditional public school establishment. Just two years earlier, when first learning about charter schools, he recalls questioning the necessity for "new" schools when so many operational public schools were in…

In 1998 the World Bank published a "Reform Agenda" for higher education in the new millennium designed to accelerate privatization and the restructuring of the academic workforce. Before analyzing the report, I consider how changes in Canadian universities reflect the growth of the "knowledge-based economy." I then provide a…

The Berlin Wall was one of the most visible symbols of two worlds that could not view each other. Thus, the fall of the Berlin Wall--and the fall of Communist regimes all over Eastern Europe, ultimately including the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself--removed the barrier to visibility. These events were revolutions that resulted in the end of…

This article presents the author's response to Strathdee's "Reply to O'Neill: The privatisation of public schooling in New Zealand." Strathdee has alerted the editors to a basic arithmetic error in the author's paper (O'Neill 2011, 24). He also makes substantive criticisms. Strathdee's criticisms focus on the two cases that are used to…

This paper applies ideas that emanate from the Global North, concerning neoliberalism and neoliberal governmentality, to the case of marketisation in South Africa. It also attends to the limits of Northern ideas that are both intellectual undertakings and policy manifestations. In the first part of the paper, we identify how rationales for school…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) represents a quantum leap in both Federal involvement and Federal mandates to schools. In the relatively short period of less than a decade NCLB has changed how teachers teach, what subjects are taught, and how teachers and principals are evaluated. As NCLB continues to impact American education and educational…