Online program managers (OPMs) are third-party companies that work with colleges and universities to develop, launch, and deliver online learning. Despite the prevalence of these companies in higher education, cost details are often buried or asserted with legal protections as trade secrets or business models unavailable for public review.3…

Across the globe school autonomy reforms have been criticised for opening up public assets to various dangers or risks, from misappropriation of public monies by private sponsors to secretive governance structures maintained by homophilic groups. While these risks are not the exclusive product of school autonomy reforms, they are an endemic…

In this Discussion Paper, the author presents a review of the papers in this collection, based upon the theme "Responsibility and responsibilisation in education." Each author in their own way has expressed a concern for analysing and charting the effects of the process called "responsibilisation" in the realm of education…

Drawing on an integrative review of the literature on the privatization of education and an empirical case study of technology corporations in education, this article examines the corporate within the political economy of education. It argues that by analytically conceiving of corporations under the banner of the private sphere and,…

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…

School reform in the past several decades has taken a "modernist" bent in that it has focused on quantitatively based accountability systems modeled after business (Ravitch, 2013; Tienken & Orlich, 2013). The author uses a model devised by a Finnish scholar to demonstrate that 1) these reforms are indeed modernist, and 2) the private…

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…

"Privatization of America's Public Institutions" describes the transformation of the military, K-12 public schools, public universities and colleges, and prisons into enterprises focused on generating profits for a select few. In many cases, privatization has limited accessibility, promoted segregation, fueled declining standards,…

A number of significant campaigning organisations and education trades unions--the Anti-Academies Alliance, CASE, Comprehensive Future, Forum, ISCG and the Socialist Educational Association, along with ASCL, ATL, NASUWT and NUT--staged a conference in London on 19 November 2011, with the title 'Caught in the (Education) Act: tackling Michael…

Many fear that the pressures of running an Academy will be too great for individual schools, and that they will be forced to join chains run by private companies. These may offer hard-pressed school administrators valuable management expertise and back-office support, but seem to offer wider society little accountability and transparency. Are…

Since the early 1990s, European higher education has been undergoing drastic changes with regard to the organisation and governance of academic work. The political emphasis on higher education autonomy and accountability went hand in hand with the introduction of market type steering devices and a new discourse regarding the universities'…

The charter school movement is prepared to expand at rates once unimaginable. Yet, a glaring hypocrisy exists in the movement that education and political leaders seem eager to ignore. The charter school movement stakes its very effectiveness and value on increased levels of accountability and measurable student achievement results; but it fails…

In the current rush to adopt and expand digital learning, many important considerations are being overlooked that will have major consequences for the future of American public education. As private education technology contractors and vendors move deeper into the work of public education, questions concerning the quality of the services, who is…

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…

To what extent school improvement processes can be initiated and sustained from the outside has been a relevant question for policy-makers seeking to increase quality in education. Since 2008, the Chilean Government is strongly promoting the use of external technical support (ETS) services to support school improvement processes, as part of the…