Reviews the many dramatically different forms of school choice proposals, warning against implementing sharply limited and regulated school choice plans and arguing that if the failure of school choice is wrongly attributed to too much choice rather than too little, broader and freer experiments in choice could be politically doomed. Focuses on…

Explains free-market environmentalism, demonstrating how it is integral to environmental economics. Discusses issues such as market and government failures; the "tragedy of the commons"; and how to avoid said tragedy, focusing on the role of private property rights. Provides suggestions for history, social studies, and economics teachers on…

Examines background issues on privatization along with reviewing arguments regarding its adoption. Notes the vertical lack of governmental controls and regulation of privatization. Raises lingering legal questions that remain in the rush to privatization. (MLF)

Three school districts are working successfully with a private contractor to reduce the operating costs of lunch programs, while increasing participation and maintaining nutrition standards. The facilities department of the fourth school is producing higher quality work and greater accountability under the direction of a private contractor. (MLF)

The U.S. Supreme Court through its interpretation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause may ultimately determine whether state-funded voucher proposals are widely adopted. This paper overviews changes in Establishment-Clause doctrine, reviews relevant litigation, and explores potential implications of recent legal developments. (Contains 80…

The two students who won commercial sponsorship for their college education embody entrepreneurialism's darker side-the growing commercialism of schools and conscious targeting of students as lifelong consumers. This update discusses developments in program, activity, and materials sponsorships; exclusive agreements; electronic marketing;…

Much of the controversy surrounding school vouchers, and privatization schemes generally, stems from concerns about social stratification. This paper identifies the form and magnitude of selection effects in a means-tested New York City voucher program. It compares students who applied for vouchers, with the eligible population of public-school…

Privatization in higher education is usually understood either as the surge of private institutions or as universities' growing reliance on private sources of funding or otherwise operating more like firms. Joining the growing literature on university entrepreneurship, this is a case study on the less examined problem of entrepreneurial…

The Czech Republic, England, France, Germany and Sweden differ culturally and economically, but they commonly exhibit general trends of decentralisation in the control of educational processes and outcomes. The present contribution looks at these five European countries as the venue for case studies in educational restructuring as well as…

This paper reviews the development of education governance in South Africa during the 1990s. It outlines ambiguities within and between competing policies, tracing the historical trajectory and explaining its outcome. Apartheid governance, the attempts to reform it, policy options originating within the anti-apartheid movement, and the law passed…

This article reports on the differences in democratic education across school types, using the US National Household Education Survey (NHES) of 1999. We replicate the estimation approach of Campbell (1998) and find a strongly positive effect from attendance at Catholic school or private independent schools on community service participation, civic…

This article focuses on how architecture, and aesthetic interventions generally, might be transformed from hegemonic to counterhegemonic in order to realign political forces in the production of culture and social life. In a prior REMARX commentary for "Rethinking Marxism", the authors critiqued the concept of "the political"…

Since the election of the Campbell government in 2001, teachers have experienced heightened conflict with the provincial government. An analysis of the discourse and power relations between the BC Teachers' Federation (BCTF) and government reveals a neo-liberal agenda on the part of government and anti-neo-liberalism on the part of the BCTF.…

In the United States, the relationship between state governments and public colleges and universities is being redefined with new notions of autonomy and accountability, and with funding policies that are highly market-driven (often referred to as "privatisation") as the centrepieces. Situations and institutional strategies unthinkable…

This article comments on Fullinwider and Lichtenberg's "Leveling the Playing Field". It reviews their central claims and comments on both their arguments and their reform proposals, and suggests alternative, bolder, egalitarian proposals which involve a higher degree of effective privatization than theirs. (Contains 1 note.)