In recent years, the federal government (under Republican and Democratic administrations alike) has encouraged the outsourcing of core parts of public education's work, including testing and test preparation, teaching and tutoring, data collection, and human resources management. However, researchers have found little evidence to support policy…

Education reform policies harvested from neoliberalism, social Darwinism, consumerism, and free-market ideologies have begun to replace the pragmatic progressivism of the pre-World War II era. In this article, I use three federal and state education reform policies and programs--No Child Left Behind Act, Common Core State Standards Initiative, and…

In this report the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution presents the results of a self-developed Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) along with an interactive application that grades large school districts according to the ECCI. The index is composed of 13 pro choice criteria. The authors present the ECCI as a…

Current and former leaders of many major urban school districts, including Washington, D.C.'s Michelle Rhee and New Orleans' Paul Vallas, have sought to use tests to evaluate teachers. In fact, the use of high-stakes standardized tests to evaluate teacher performance in the manner of value-added measurement (VAM) has become one of the cornerstones…

Education has rarely been absent from local and national public discourse. Throughout the history of modern education spanning more than a century, individuals have as a culture lamented the failures of public schooling, often making such claims based on assumptions instead of any nuanced consideration of the many influences on teaching and…

Focus and institutional policy under the No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB] (U.S. Department of Education 2001) has prioritized the individualistic, market-driven agenda. The NCLB regime has gained hegemony over the political space of public education, and the value and effectiveness of the educational process has become subject to the fetishism of…

The argument for national curriculum standards sounds simple: set high standards, make all schools meet them, and watch American students achieve at high levels. It is straightforward and compelling, and it is driving a sea change in American education policy. Unfortunately, setting high standards and getting American students to hit them is…

In a decade and a half, the charter school movement has gone from a glimmer in the eyes of a few Minnesota reformers to a maturing sector of America's public education system. Now, like all 15-year-olds, chartering must find its own place in the world. First, advocates must answer a fundamental question: What type of relationship should the…

To an unprecedented degree, this is the era of educational entrepreneurship. Unconventional thinkers have waded into the world of K-12 education, founded influential organizations, and upended conventions. They have developed new models for delivering instruction or recruiting teachers and have applied old-fashioned practices with inspired…

This book examines the changes in educational policy in the U.S. and Britain over the last twenty-five years. The author contends that education in the States and Britain has been significantly transformed, through efforts to create curricular standards, increased emphasis on accountability measured by standardized tests, and efforts to introduce…

This chapter is organized as follows. The first section examines the evolving state and federal role in education and the implications of an expanded federal role on the structure of the educational system. It pays particular attention to how the debate on the causes and solutions to school reform has shifted and the impact this has had on school…

This document presents the November 2004 issue of the Council for American Private Education's (CAPE's) monthly newsletter, "Outlook." Articles in this issue include: (1) Government Report Shows Increase in Private Schools and Students; (2) CAPE Board Meets with Secretary Paige; (3) Forum Focuses on Market Education; (4) SAT Scores Go…

Education in both England and the United States has undergone a profound change over the last two decades as part of neo-liberal and neoconservative political reforms. The reforms have been characterized by efforts to standardize the curriculum, to implement standardized tests in order to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable, to…