Changes in Russian education are described: one-third of children are being educated at home; state universities face dwindling financial support; private institutions are being established; freedom of curriculum design has replaced uniform pedagogical processes; and new forms of higher education are emerging. (SK)

Our review of Henry Giroux's Stealing Innocence, Alex Molnar's Giving Kids the Business, and Kenneth Saltman's Collateral Damage describes how these authors assess the problems posed by contemporary corporate influences on public schools and considers the solutions they offer to counter those influences. We also examine Henry Levin's edited…

In this article, the authors detail the conditions and patterns of academic capitalism and the new economy in US higher education. Subsequently, a conceptual model is offered for considering the international reach and national and local patterns of academic capitalism. Further, a distinctive Mexican case of entrepreneurialism is offered. The…

A central argument of this essay suggests that the truth of globalization is little known to the body politic as it is enmeshed in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, avarice, and despotism. This project hopes to first locate, and then unmask the realities of globalization, warts and all. Gaining some knowledge of globalization, the…

In this article I use the concept of "re-agenting" to explore and explain the role of non-state agencies, principally private companies and business entrepreneurs, as key instruments in the government's transformation of the school system in England. Their role takes both for-profit and not-for-profit forms. The outsourcing to private…

The goal of this article is to move beyond the more traditional question, "Does business have a role in public education?" A historical overview of education suggests that the involvement of the private sector is not a new phenomenon and is not likely to end in the near future. Here, the authors argue that a much more fruitful line of…

Prior to 1991, all higher education institutions in the Soviet Union were state institutions. There were some 900 higher educational institutions in 1990, including only 70 major universities, still referred to as VUZy, from the Russian "vysshee uchebnoe zavedenie". This acronym is popularly used to refer to all types of higher education…

Homeschooling has developed from a small, isolated, parent-led effort to a vibrant national movement to lobby for and legalize K-12 education at home in all 50 states. Although a majority of homeschool families are Evangelical Christians, the others come from a variety of religious and nonreligious backgrounds, giving homeschooling a broad…

In 2003, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provided Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) with a $3.5 million grant to design and implement a faith- and community-based program for incarcerated juveniles. Florida's experience developing a completely new program has provided valuable lessons regarding…

Analyses of private higher education should consider the increasingly important for-profit sector in many countries. Yet information on the for-profit sector has been quite limited. Even in the United States, where for-profit higher education is well-established, only recently have researchers turned their attention to studying its scope and…

The proliferation of high-quality independent charter schools is constrained by the shortage of founders committed to evidence-based school designs and possessing the broad-ranging skills to make good on their audacious plans. The time and energies of such exceptional leaders are deployed over years in building schools that rarely reach more than…

This article explores how the law currently influences accountability in three different privatization contexts: (1) private schools operated independently of the state; (2) public schools operated by private organizations under charter or subcontract with government entities; and (3) private schools participating in publicly-funded voucher…

This paper provides a detailed examination of "contracting," a type of privatization, and is intended to clarify the issues surrounding decisions to privatize public services. Privatization introduces competition among market participants as a means of generating revenue, spurring development of an industry, and/or improving the quality of…

This newsletter focuses on matters related to the privatization of education in different contexts around the world. Over the past few years, the International Institute for Educational Planning has carried out a number of studies in a wide range of contexts to identify what the real-life experiments in school organization are, why they have…

Concerned about the deadening effects of standardization imposed by monopolistic education bureaucracies, policymakers in many different countries endorse economic-style mechanisms of consumer choice and competition between autonomous providers as the key elements of "market-driven" education. The reasoning behind this approach is that market…