Today, American education faces a crisis. It is not too extreme to say that public education hangs in the balance. Anyone who has read the history of American education knows that there have always been critics. But they did not want public education dismantled. They wanted it to be better. Today, however, there are critics who believe that public…

Hong Kong has undergone a series of educational reforms since the mid 1990s in response to the tidal wave of globalisation. This article tries to examine the recent education reforms in Hong Kong's higher education within the global context, by putting into perspective a discussion of its policy implications of marketisation, privatisation and…

With Michigan's public school districts facing a decline in per-pupil funding, more districts are contracting out for at least one of the three major school support services--food, custodial and transportation--than ever before. This year's survey of school districts found that 44.6 percent of all Michigan school districts contract out for at…

Issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, "A School Privatization Primer for Michigan School Officials, Media and Residents" examines the "contracting out" of public school support services--specifically food, transportation, and custodial services. The report describes the prevalence of contracting out and sets forth…

This article considers how the private finance initiative, a contract for infrastructure, affected teachers' perceptions of efficacy, job satisfaction, and morale at an urban secondary school in the United Kingdom. Qualitative data collection techniques, including unstructured observation and semistructured personal interviews, were utilized to…

The development of private higher education in China is an important area of policy concern and for academic research, especially under the conditions of globalization. This article reviews the current situation and forecasts the likely trend in several key areas, such as governmental regulation, funds and competition for enrolments. The article…

This article examines equity in national systems of education in terms of differences in student outcomes, as measured by mathematics achievement scores on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The author uses four measures for assessing equity in student outcomes: (1) the strength of the relationship between student…

In the last two decades, China's education has experienced significant transformations and restructuring on account of privatization and marketization. Unlike the Mao era when the state assumed the major responsibilities in financing and providing education, individuals and families have now to bear increasing financial burdens in paying for…

This article reviews educational initiatives of state and federal government that were designed to remedy the effects of racial segregation on Black public school students in the United States after the famous "Brown v. Board of Education" decisions. Several policy and legal initiatives are reviewed, including school desegregation,…

Breaking new ground in studies of business involvement in schooling, this book dissects the most powerful educational reforms and highlights their relationship to the rise of powerful think tanks and business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement to privatize public schooling through business ventures. At the…

This article reflects on the historic tensions of education under capitalism, arguing that they have been exacerbated in our era of neo-liberal globalisation. Government drives for greater "accountability" and "effectiveness" are a blinkered response to the threefold global crisis we face: poverty and debt; a collapse of the…

Concern over Social Security's forecasted long-run deficit is occurring at a time when the program has a short-term surplus. One proposed strategy to address this forecasted deficit is to allow the investment of a portion of payroll taxes into private savings accounts (PSAs). The author analyzes recent proposals for PSAs and concludes that PSAs…

In this article we introduce and explain a funding framework for advancing an equity agenda at the community college. The need for the framework is premised on (a) Dowd's observation that the traditional community college commitment to student access no longer suffices as an adequate strategy to achieve greater equity in society and (b) the…

The House of Representatives requested that the Health, Education, and Human Services Division (HEHS) examine privatization of child support enforcement programs in the United States. HEHS was to determine: (1) advantages and disadvantages of privatization, and the extent of these programs currently; (2) terms of contracts; (3) legalities of…

This collection of essays builds a case against those who see children as customers or workers and those who want to turn learning into a business. Following an introduction, The 500-Pound Gorilla by Alfie Kohn, section 1, Commercialism in Schools, contains: (1) Buy Me! Buy Me! (Alex Molnar and Joseph A. Reaves); (2) Commercialism in U.S. Schools…