Neoliberal educational reforms

In the article, Neoliberalism and education reform, E. Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson argue that public education is a key target of the neoliberal project because of its market size, its centrality to the economy and its potential challenge to corporate globalization.

Neoliberal educational reforms emphasize opening up the educational services market to for-profit education management organizations (such as Edition Schools) and via international trade and investment agreements such as GATS, which in turn affects the scope of collect agreements.

With global spending on education as more than $1 trillion, it makes sense why there is such a big push for the commodification or privatization of public education. Instead of expanding services and resources to all students, the same government has produced policies that are destroying and making education less accessible.

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.

The No Child Left Behind Act in the United States has been instrumental for the commodification of public education by reducing learning to bits of information and by marketizing education through programs that promote privatization.

Neoliberal educational reform policies focus on creation of curriculum standards (where the state defines the knowledge to be taught) and “accountability.” The dominant approach to educational accountability is an “outcomes-based bureaucratic” one.

The No Child Left Behind Act seems to have further solidified corporate control of education for profit by framing it in the language of accountability and choice