Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

Across the country, states have expanded their voucher programs rapidly within the past few years. School choice advocates named 2023 the "year of universal choice" because of the frequency of states adopting these programs. Universal school choice programs make school vouchers available to all families, regardless of their income level…

At a time of bitter national polarization, there is a critical need for leaders who can help us better communicate with one another. In "A Search for Common Ground," Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera, who have often fallen on opposing sides of the ideological aisle over the past couple of decades, candidly talk through their differences on…

The article re-imagines the current developments of Swedish education into a possible future. Historically, education was organized and funded by the state; however, reforms towards privatization in the 1990s implemented school choice, private schools and a tax-financed voucher system with the option of turning profits on education. A new judicial…

Education markets have spread worldwide over the past few decades. Frequently, the expansion of markets in education is presented by their promoters as a means to improve the opportunities of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged students. However, the evidence available shows that market-oriented policies that enhance competition and choice…

This paper on the political sociology of school choice policies has been written as a supplement to the essays in the 2020 Politics of Education Association Yearbook and locates them in cognate literatures. In addition, the papers are situated against the changing political and global contexts of such policies, as global pressures, discourses, and…

In 2020, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera engaged in a long-running correspondence that tackled many of the biggest questions in education -- including topics like school choice, equity and diversity, testing, privatization, the achievement gap, social and emotional learning, and civics. They sought to unpack their disagreements, better understand one…

Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos wants to privatize American education using charter schools, vouchers, tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and portable federal funds. Court and legislative decisions are facilitating these ends. Understanding the school choice agenda and its fiscal, academic, and legal aspects can help…

Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, has a reform agenda to advance school choice. Her track record includes enabling charter school growth in Michigan at taxpayers' expense with little oversight or accountability. Although an effective advocate, DeVos represents a broader policy movement to privatize American education, much of it…

A growing body of research examines the role of elite networks, power, and race in the advocacy for market-based reforms and their ultimate effects on students, teachers, and communities of color. Yet, less research explores how such reforms interact with gender in the workplace, especially how policies such as school choice, competition, and…

In this timely interdisciplinary volume, William Watkins has brought together leading scholars and activists to address some of the most urgent issues facing public education. What is underneath and behind the language of choice, efficiency, and improvement in current neoliberal discourse? How will urban and poor populations be affected? Will…

In cities across the nation, communities of color find themselves resisting state disinvestment and the politics of dispossession. Students at the Center--a writing initiative based in several New Orleans high schools--takes on this struggle through a close examination of race and schools. The book builds on the powerful stories of marginalized…

This paper highlights emerging trends, programmes and policies in privatization of education in Western countries. These trends are educational vouchers, choice of private schools, private school liberalization, private contracting of specific services, tuition tax credits and deductions for parents ,subsidies and assistance grants to private…

The author, a former headteacher and now a county councillor, argues that the structural changes to the education system put in place in the first weeks of the new government in the summer of 2010 will exacerbate the gap between the highest and lowest achieving schools, will destabilise the state-funded education system, will expose it to…

Building on fieldwork conducted in the West Bank settlement Beit-El, this article analyses the generational divide between first- and second-generation settlers in terms of their values and practices, against the backdrop of the new realities created by economic restructuring in Israel. It argues that the investments that settler parents made in…