When Governor Roy Romer challenged Colorado's 20 largest districts to undergo performance audits, 12 responded. Consultants recommended that districts provide more market-sensitive salaries, privatize certain functions, cross-train personnel, and create job flexibility. Districts can improve overall efficiency by generating accurate operational…

Explores school leadership in Britain's newly privatized and marketized professional-development environment. Considers a model to identify key elements in a "professional development culture." Examines the development coordinator's role as a "delegated leader." Suggests a model for exploring the relationship between continuing…

Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools sends up to 100 high-risk/expelled students yearly to two privately operated Richard Milburn campuses. The cost is $3,500 per student. Although these schools lack typical high-school amenities, kids appreciate getting more teacher attention. Houston has a similar, more costly last-resort program. (MLH)

Investigated job insecurity of 326 Israeli secondary teachers in public and private sectors, using a multidimensional measure of job insecurity. Public-sector teachers tended to emphasize intrinsic job factors, while private-sector teachers tended to stress extrinsic ones. Job insecurity's effects on teacher attitudes also differed. (59…

Explores the emergence of (British) teacher employment agencies and the increased volume of employment agency business in teaching, drawing on interviews with agency representatives. Views agencies as part of a wider agenda that includes marketization and privatization trends mirrored in further education. Part-time teaching is on the rise.…

Explores the impact of grantseeking on urban public school teachers, examining how it introduced them to the central tenets of the privatization movement, discussing how specific assumptions about urban teachers have influenced the development of grant competition, and describing the exclusion of minority teachers. A case history illustrates the…

About 1,500 schools nationwide pay an estimated $200 million in federal funds to private enterprises claiming to provide better literacy instruction than the disappointing Title I results of the past 34 years. Programs run by Kaplan Inc., Success for All Foundation, Sylvan Learning Systems, and Reading Recovery Council are described. (MLH)

In "Corporate School Takeovers," the National Education Association expresses indignation over profit making by private companies providing services to schools. Argues that profits are a way of recognizing costs that exist in all school settings. The seeking of profits is no more selfish than the seeking of higher salaries, promotions,…

Schools and other government facilities want to see whether privatization of maintenance can provide services as efficiently and at less cost than inhouse workers. Privatization proponents say that everyone will benefit the most if the bidding process involves competition. Offers examples from the Memphis City Schools and the Union Public Schools…

The Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Schools found that the number of press citations from 1990 to 2000 discussing seven types of commercializing activities (program sponsorship, exclusive agreements, incentive programs, appropriation of space, sponsored educational materials, electronic marketing, privatization, and fund raising)…

Discusses how officials at Salt Lake Community College decided the only way they could get the kind of technology service they needed was to hire a company to run the operation; the plan will not save money, but seeks better service and room for expansion. (EV)

Emphasizes strategies that can be employed for effective outsourcing in higher education settings. Several models of outsourcing are identified and described, and examples of institutions using each model are provided. (GCP)

In this article, the author discusses the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)-required testing and privatization in public education. The author points out that the NCLB is not a step in the right direction. It is a deeply damaging, mostly ill-intentioned law, and no one genuinely committed to improving public schools (or to advancing the interests of…

Discusses how market failures can, in principle, be used to justify national parks. States the best rationale is based on existence or nonuse values instead of the recreational aspects. Shows more evidence (costs of providing and operating the parks and the magnitude of nonuse values) is needed before the case becomes compelling. (JEH)

Since the early 1950s, the axis "centralisation-decentralisation", especially as thematised in the work of Isaac Kandel, has represented a major focus of comparative studies in education. Kandel argued that issues relating to the internal conduct of the classroom (interna) should, so far as possible, be decentralised, while issues…