This paper focuses on the role of the World Bank and its subsidiaries in promoting the neoliberal educational reforms of privatization and decentralization globally and in El Salvador. Neoliberalism is first defined as a sociopolitical philosophy that supports concepts such as the free market, market-driven education, and the use of a voucher system to provide consumer choice to individuals and families pursuing education. Based on early evidence and existing global conditions, it appears that the neoliberal reforms of privatization and decentralization will do little to reduce poverty and improve access to schooling for the impoverished and girls. An increase in basic education will doubtless provide a growing work force of semiliterate, semiskilled workers for the subsidiaries of transnational corporations. Decentralization of local basic schools will grant more decision-making to parents and communities, but will reduce the power of national teacher unions and the national government. Standardized curricula and tests will ensure employers of a code of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that will be most useful to their demands. This knowledge will include language, science, mathematics, and communications, but very little of the students' culture, such as art, music, and literature. (Contains 56 references.) (RT)