Title: (PDF) Neoliberalism and Education Reform | E. Wayne Ross - Academia.edu
Headings: Neoliberalism and Education Reform
Neoliberalism and Education Reform
E. Wayne Ross
Neoliberalism and Education Reform

Content: NEOLIBERALISM AND EDUCATIONAL REFORMPublic education is under attack in North America and across the globe as a result of neoliberal government policies. 1 Education is a key target of the neoliberal project because of market size (e.g., global spending on education is more than $1 trillion 2 ), education's centrality to the economy, and its "potential to challenge corporate globalization if education succeeds in producing critical citizens for a democratic society" (Kuehn, 1999).Governments have introduced curricular reforms, via legislation such as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in the United States (which is extensively discussed in this volume), which commodify public education by reducing learning to bits of information and skill to be taught and tested and marketize education through programs that promote privatization and user fees in place of free, public education. Neoliberal educational reforms (aimed at K-12 schools and universities) emphasize opening up the educational services market to for-profit educational management organizations (such as Edison Schools) and via international trade and investment agreements such as GATS (see Rikowski,Chapter 6,this volume), which in turn affects the scope of collect agreements (e.g., establishing working conditions, rates of pay, teacher autonomy, etc. ) .Relatedly, efforts are made to reduce educational costs, often through economies of scale. Closing school libraries, reducing the number of special needs teachers, increasing class size, expanding online learning programs are examples. These actions intensify the work of teachers and isolate them from decision making and from one another. Third, neoliberal educational reform policies focus on creation of curriculum standards (where the state defines the knowledge to be taught) and "accountability." The specification of curriculum standards is nearly always accompanied by accountability strategies. As Mathison (2004) pointed out, it does no good to establish expectations if one does not ensure they are met and, if they are not met that there is a planned remedy. The dominant approach to educational accountability is an "outcomes-based bureaucratic" one (i.e., most often mandated testing).Whether the stakes are high or low and whether the locus of control is local, state, or national, this strategy is one where a distant authority sets ROSS & GIBSONperformance goals for students, schools, or school systems;