Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability: transforming education ...

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Policy Futures in Education, Volume 3, Number 1, 2005

Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability: transforming education and undermining democracy in the United States and England DAVID HURSH University of Rochester, USA

ABSTRACT 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 increase school choice, and to privatize education provision. While the reforms in both countries have similarities, differences in the structures of schooling and in the relative political strength of neoconservatives and neo-liberals help to account for policy divergence. Over the last several decades, primary and secondary education in the United States and England has undergone a profound transformation. While not desiring to romanticize the past, not long ago most students attended the local school to which they were assigned, learned from teachers who used and adapted the school’s and district’s curriculum, and were evaluated based primarily on teacher-prepared assessments. Now, however, students are increasingly given a choice of which school to attend (although, as we shall see, some students have more choice than others), learn from teachers who use a curriculum required by either the state or national curriculum or the standardized test, and are evaluated to a significant degree by those standardized tests. I will summarize some of the educational reforms occurring in both the United States and England with the aim of showing how they arise from similar neo-liberal and neoconservative political rationales, and the similarities and differences between how the policies have been implemented. The differences between the two educational systems have more to do with differences between the two governmental systems than with the overall policy objectives. Lastly, I will briefly describe how the policies fail to achieve their ostensible goals. Shifting Policies: the rise of neo-liberalism and the end of the welfare state Since the end of World War II, the social and economic policies of both the United States and the United Kingdom (and much of the rest of the world) have shifted from the Keynesian welfare state to the neo-liberal post-welfare state. This shift has been well described by many (Gewirtz, 2002), and while I cannot do justice to the issues in a short article such as this, I will provide a brief description of the social and economic changes. Furthermore, I will argue that the current educational policies arise out of the need for governments to retain legitimacy by appearing to be doing something about the increasing economic inequality, to support capital accumulation through the reduction of taxes and the education of workers, and, particularly for neoconservatives in response to the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, to regain social control (Gewirtz, 2002, pp. 10-11). At the risk of greatly oversimplifying, neo-liberal policies arose as a corporate and political response to the previous Keynesian economic accommodation that existed to different degrees in

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David Hursh Europe and North America after World War II. In contrast to the years preceding the war, an unusual level of agreement between corporations and workers marked the first two decades after the war. During this period, in exchange for improving wages, workers consented to capital’s right not only to control the workplace, but also to allow capitalist control of investment and growth, primarily through the growth of multinational corporations. At the same time, workers, women, and people of color struggled for and were able to extend their personal and political rights for education, housing, health, workplace safety, and to vote (Bowles & Gintis, 1986, pp. 57-59). In part fuelled by workers’ growing wages, the post-war period was marked by unusually rapid and stable economic growth. However, as workers earned and spent more, businesses’ net rate of profit fell by more than 50% between 1965 and 1974 (Parenti, 1999, p. 118). Profits fell primarily because cost pressures from labor could not be passed on to consumers in the increasingly competitive and open world economy (Bowles & Gintis, 1986, p. 60). In order to restore higher rates of profit, corporate and political leaders promoted neo-liberal policies that emphasize ‘the deregulation of the economy, trade liberalization, the dismantling of the public sector [such as education, health, and social welfare], and the predominance of the financial sector of the economy over production and commerce’ (Vilas, 1996). Tabb wrote that neo-liberalism stresses the privatization of the public provision of goods and services – moving their provision from the public sector to the private – along with deregulating how private producers can behave, giving greater scope to the single-minded pursuit of profit and showing significantly less regard for the need to limit social costs or for redistribution based on nonmarket criteria. The aim of neoliberalism is to put into question all collective structures capable of obstructing the logic of the pure market. (Tabb, 2002, p. 7) For neo-liberals, the market is both a democratic and efficient solution. Whitty et al (1998), Robertson (2000), and others (Hatcher, 2003) have described how the United States and the United Kingdom and its former colonies have embraced markets and choice as a means of improving education. Whitty et al analyzed the changing educational system in five countries and conclude that ‘within the range of political rationales, it is the neo-liberal alternative which dominates, as does a particular emphasis on market mechanisms’ (p. 35). They describe how proponents of market reforms argue that they will result in more efficient and more effective schools. Similarly, Robertson (2000) notes that ‘Much of the choice/markets agenda has been shaped by the criticism of schools as inefficient bureaucracies that are unresponsive either to community or individual interests’ (p. 174). Schools, and particularly teachers, are unresponsive, write the critics, because they know parents cannot take their children elsewhere. Therefore, proponents of choice and markets argue that ‘efficiency and equity in education could only be addressed through “choice” and where family or individuals were constructed as the customers of educational services’ (Robertson, 2000, p. 174). Increasing the range of parents’ choice over their children’s schools and funding schools based on the number of students that they attract introduces a competitive market approach to the allocation of resources. Thrupp & Willmott note that by ‘the mid-1990s, Gewirtz and colleagues wrote that the “market solution (to just about everything) currently holds politicians around the world in its thrall ... Schools in England are now set within the whole paraphernalia of a market system” (Gewirtz et al, 1995, p. 1)’ (Thrupp & Willmott, 2003, p. 13). Market promoters decry ‘state intervention because it is held that administrative and bureaucratic structures are inherently inferior to markets as a means of allocating resources’. However, as Thrupp & Willmott point out, and I will expand on later, all markets depend on the state for regulation (Sayer, 1995, p. 87). In education such regulation exists in the form of standardized testing and reporting (whether as ‘school report cards’ in New York or ‘league tables’ in England), and bureaucratic structures in which preferences are recorded and selections made. Furthermore, the shift towards promoting corporate over social welfare redefines the relationship between the individual and society. Under Keynesian welfare policies, social justice required decreasing inequality through social programs and a redistribution of resources and power (Levitas, 1998, p. 14). Under neo-liberal post-welfare policies, inequality is a result of individuals’ inadequacy, which is to be remedied not by increasing dependency through social welfare, but by requiring that individuals strive to become productive members of the workforce. Neo-liberal

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Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability governments take less responsibility for the welfare of the individual; the individual becomes responsible for him or herself. The goal for neo-liberal societies is to create the competitive, instrumentally rational individual who can compete in the marketplace (Peters, 1994). Because employability and economic productivity become central, education becomes less concerned with developing the well-rounded liberally educated person and more concerned with developing the skills required for a person to become an economically productive member of society. Robertson describes the changing mandate thus: ‘educational systems, through creating appropriately skilled and entrepreneurial citizens and workers able to generate new and added economic values, will enable nations to be responsive to changing conditions within the international marketplace’ (Robertson, 2000, p. 187). Neo-liberal governments, therefore, desire to reduce funding for education while at the same time reorganizing education to fit the needs of the economy. Because the public might object to cuts in social spending and increasing economic inequality, neo-liberal policy makers have skillfully packaged the reforms to make it appear that they are promoting equality. As I will describe, they use discourses emphasizing increasing fairness in education, such as ‘requiring all students to achieve high standards as measured by objective tests’, and opportunity, such as ‘leaving no child behind’. Another way in which neo-liberal governments are able to retain their legitimacy is by blaming schools for the essential injustices and contradictions of capitalism, while they preserve inequalities through other policies such as taxation and reductions in social spending (Dale, 1989). For example, in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Callaghan, in his 1976 speech at Ruskin College, laid out the framework for the debates that were to follow. One of his fundamental themes ‘was the notion that the education system was not providing industry and the economy with what it required in terms of a skilled and well-educated workforce’ (Furlong & Phillips, 2001, p. 6). Similarly, in the United States, the authors of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1982) connected education to the economy by explicitly blaming schools for the Reagan-induced economic recession of the early 1980s (Parenti, 1999) and for the United States falling behind other countries economically (Hursh & Apple, 1983). These reports shift the blame for increasing economic inequality away from the decisions made by corporations and politicians and on to the educational system, what Apple calls ‘exporting the blame’ (Apple, 2001, p. 39). Moreover, because they have framed schools as the root of the problem, by proposing reforms they appear to be doing something about the social problems. To cite Apple again, ‘governments must be seen to be doing something ... Reforming education is not only widely acceptable and relatively unthreatening, but just as crucially, its success or failure will not be obvious in the short term’ (1996, p. 88). Focusing on educational reform not only diverts attention away from the negative implications of other policies, but also transforms the way in which we understand the relationship between the individual and society. The individual becomes central, with society and the community less important. Consequently, by shifting responsibility for individual welfare away from society as a whole and on to the individual, fewer expect society to provide an adequate education. This individualism is also reflected in the way in which education is organized. In the past, when students attended the schools in their own community, they and their parents had a common stake with other parents over the quality of the school, including, in the United States, voting on local school taxes. Schools in the United States have had a long history of local control, with families committed to making a school work because the school was the community school. Children would attend the same school as their siblings, and their families would become involved in the welfare of the school. Parents were likely to come to know other parents in their neighborhood and discuss curricular and pedagogical concerns. However, school choice, as promoted in the United States by the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) (NCLB) and in England by open enrollments, encourages parents to transfer their children from school to school, therefore undermining their allegiance to the local school and the incentive to engage in public discourse regarding the nature and purpose of schooling. Because, as I will describe, the reforms focus on turning schools into competitive markets in which students apply to the school they want to attend, children and their parents no longer have shared interests with other students and families and, instead, may become competitors for the available openings.

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David Hursh Lastly, not only have governments blamed schools for economic inequality, but they also propose that a system of standards, testing, and choice will increase educational efficiency and improve education for all. Moreover, because neo-liberal doctrine aims to reduce the size of the state and neoconservative doctrine claims to desire to intervene less in individuals’ private lives, they have been careful not to intervene directly in the everyday practices of schools. Consequently, the state has devised a system in which it can govern schools from afar through policies promoting testing, accountability, and choice, what Ball describes as steering at a distance (Ball, 1994, p. 54). Choice, Standards/Assessments, Diversity, and Privatization In Table I, I compare how the United States and Great Britain have enacted education policies, emphasizing choice/markets, standards, accountability, privatization, and diversity. Both countries have managed to introduce a market system into education, although England, through its open enrollment and the effective dissolution of the Local Education Authorities (LEAs), has implemented choice to a greater degree. In the United States, choice and competition have increased within school districts, particularly urban districts (i.e. districts composed of a majority of students who are of color and/or poor) that use specialty schools as a way to balance integration throughout the district and retain middle-class and white students within the district. However, choice within urban districts essentially redistributes students within schools already burdened with students with special needs or for whom English is a second language.

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Theme Curricular standards

United States While there is no national curriculum, the textbook industry is dominated by a few publishers who publish very similar texts. Beginning in the 1990s, states began developing curricular standards and standardized tests so that by 2001, of the 50 states, all but one had standards and many had standardized tests. Eighteen states made graduation contingent on passing one or more of the standardized exams. Standardized exams typically tested for only a small percentage of the standards. Following the passage of NCLB in 2001, all states are required to have subject-area standards and standardized exams.

Great Britain A national curriculum was instituted in 1988 to occupy 70% of the time in state schools. Primary teachers in later grades are required to implement a 10-subject curriculum and devote specific percentages of classroom time to particular subject areas (Campbell, 2001). However, Scotland and Northern Ireland have resisted the national curriculum (Nixon et al, 2002). In Wales, the curriculum differs by requiring the teaching of Welsh plus the teaching of history, geography, art, and music that reflects Welsh history and culture (Phillips & Daugherty, 2001, p. 92).

Assessment and accountability

Standardized tests were first introduced at the state level in the early to mid-1990s, with some states (New York, Texas, Florida) requiring that students pass one or more standardized tests in order to graduate. School scores are published and often used by parents to select schools. NCLB requires that standardized tests be given in math, reading, and science initially in grades 3 through 8, and by 2007-08 in grades 3 through 12. Schools are required to make ‘adequate yearly progress’ (AYP) and all students are to achieve proficiency by the year 2014. Schools failing to make AYP face numerous consequences, including losing students, funds, and, potentially, the privatization of the administration of the school or the school as a whole.

Standardized tests were introduced as part of the Education Reform Act of 1988 as a means to ‘measure the performance of pupils at the end of four Key Stages, but also to make it possible for market forces to operate by providing a currency of information which would fuel competition between schools’ (Broadfoot, 2001, p. 142). The act also included the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam at the end of Key Stage 4. The publishing of league tables promoted the comparison of schools.

Privatization

Voucher programs, in which students are provided with public funds to attend private (including religious) schools, were recently approved by the US Supreme Court. Further, some states have instituted charter

Education is seen as an opportunity for corporations to ‘produce human capital for competitiveness in the global economy’ and ‘to open up state education systems to private education-for-profit companies’

Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability school programs: publicly funded, privately administered schools. The Bush administration is an outspoken proponent of charter schools and has used discretionary funds to support organizations favoring privatization (Miner, 2004). Under NCLB, public schools that fail to make AYP for five years can be converted into charter schools.

(Hatcher, 2003, p. 1). For example, school inspections and professional development, previously carried out by the state, are now conducted by private corporations (Hatcher, 2003, p. 4). Corporations can sponsor ‘specialist schools’ and through their sponsorship gain the ability to appoint the majority of the school board and control the direction and curriculum of the school. While corporations cannot now make a profit from their sponsorships, Conservatives are hoping to eliminate that restriction (Peterson, 2004, p. 32). Schools are encouraged to market their curriculum: one school has made $10 million profit over two years by selling its courses that prepare students for exams (Peterson, 2004, p. 34).

Choice (markets)

Under NCLB, students in schools that fail to make AYP for two years must be given the option to transfer to a school not in ‘need of improvement’. However, since failing schools tend to be clustered by district (urban and poor), there are typically few, if any, schools to which to transfer. If there are insufficient openings in a student’s school district, they can choose to transfer to a nearby school district. However, few students take advantage of this option. NCLB also encourages the creation of charter schools and may be part of an effort to portray public schools as failing so that they can be replaced by private schools for which students would receive vouchers to pay for part of the tuition cost.

Open enrollment. Students may apply to attend other schools. However, preferred schools with strong test results can choose among the applicants and are not likely to choose students who will bring down their test scores or place a burden on the school. Similarly, schools with low test scores struggle to retain their enrollment and, therefore, are pressured to accept the students who apply. Studies by Ball (1990, 2003), Bowe et al (1992), Gewirtz et al (1995) and Ball et al (1996) demonstrate that choice policies increase social class segregation in schools (cited in Tomlinson, 2001, p. 73).

Diversity

Competition between schools, particularly with the creation of privately governed but publicly funded schools, is to promote diversity in educational methods. But in some states, such as New York, charter schools are to be required to deliver the same curriculum and prepare students for the same tests.

Schools are described as being free from local control, particularly the Local Education Authorities. But given the national curriculum and GCSEs, there seems to be little opportunity for schools to be different or to respond to the diversity of students.

Table I. Comparisons of education policies in the United States and England, emphasizing curricular standards, assessment and accountability, privatization, choice, and diversity.

Choice/Markets NCLB explicitly introduces choice and competition into the educational system, as students are given the ostensible option to leave a school that fails to make ‘adequate yearly progress’ (AYP). Furthermore, not only might ‘failing’ schools lose students, but they may also lose funding, as they are required to use funds to pay for student tutoring by outside for-profit or faith-based organizations. And if a student leaves for another school, they not only lose the funding that follows the student, but they must also pay for the student’s transportation. However, as I note, the number of students who have taken advantage of the option to leave their school has been limited by the lack of ‘succeeding’ schools. Because ‘success’ or ‘failure’ has nothing to do with whether a school’s scores are rising or falling but with whether the scores reach a rising minimum threshold, ‘failing schools’ are largely confined to those districts that have large percentages of students living

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David Hursh in poverty (for more on how improving schools can be found to be ‘failing’ and declining schools can be found to be ‘succeeding’, see Hursh & Martina, 2003). In 2003 in New York, 83% of the failing schools were located in the five largest cities and most of the remaining failing schools were in smaller urban areas. In Rochester, the third largest district in New York, all the middle schools and most of the high schools are ‘failing’. Even when students can transfer to a nearby school, students have been reluctant to do so. Few parents and students believe that a higher school aggregate test score ensures a better learning experience. Most students and their families prefer to stay where they are. James Kadamus, New York’s Deputy Commissioner of Education and a strong proponent of standardized testing and accountability, admits that few parents are interested in transferring their children to another school: ‘In general, parents don’t want to transfer out of their neighborhood school. They want to improve the school in their neighborhood’ (New York State School Boards Association, 2002). In England choice exists, but choice exists more for some than others. Gewirtz (2002) studied four schools for the effects that markets had on the staff. One school, with an enrollment that is mainly white with few students who are English-language learners or have special needs, is ‘expanding in order to accommodate growing demand and to maximize income’ (p. 93). In contrast, a nearby undersubscribed school has few students who choose to go there but attend because they have failed to be accepted anywhere else, have been excluded from other schools, ‘or they belong to refugee or homeless families which have been placed in temporary accommodation near the school’ (p. 13). Gewirtz shows how the already advantaged school is able to retain and attract more capable students while the school struggling to meet the needs of its low-income and migrant students cannot attract students and must accept the students excluded from the favored schools (p. 66). Furthermore, other studies have shown how the process of selecting and applying to schools favors middle-class families. ‘Middle-class parents’, write Robertson & Lauder, ‘seek out a segment of the market ... that enables them to access the ... educational settings that can be converted into a positional good in a more competitive labor market’ (Robertson & Lauder, 2001, p. 232). Ball’s research, including that reported in Class Strategies and the Education Market (2003), describes how the middle class are able to use their social and cultural capital to gain advantages in the schoolselection process. On the other hand, working-class ‘families may not choose more selective schools because schools are spaces where they feel out of place, and choices may be as much about the avoidance of anxiety, failure and rejection as they are about “choosing a good school for my child”’ (Reay & Ball, 1997, p. 93). Robertson & Lauder write that choice may be about ‘fitting in’ and ‘operates as a social class process with social class consequences’ (Robertson & Lauder, 2001, pp. 233-234). Standards and Assessments England, in an effort to ostensibly raise standards, has implemented more stringent curriculum requirements compared to the United States, and requires subject-area tests at several stages. The national curriculum is ‘to occupy some 70 percent of school time in state schools’ and is accompanied by standard assessment tasks (SATs) to be implemented at four Key Stages (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 56). Tomlinson describes some of the resistance by teachers to the national curriculum and assessments, including boycotting some of the tests. However, the curriculum and accompanying tests continue to impact strongly the work of teachers and students, most significantly ending the influence teachers, students, parents, governors, LEAs, and independent bodies have on the curriculum. In the United States, the states still reserve the authority to develop curricula and tests, and previous to the passage of NCLB states varied in developing mandated curricula and standardized tests. Some states had no statewide-standardized exams while others, such as Texas, New York, and Florida, used standardized exams as a graduation requirement. However, under NCLB all states are now required to develop standards and to give standardized tests in math, reading, and science. In states such as New York, the combination of federal and state testing requirements results in students facing a minimum of 33 standardized exams during their school career. Moreover, while

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Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability states such as New York have no de jure state curriculum, the standardized testing requirements result in a de facto state curriculum as teachers prepare students by teaching toward the tests. State and federal policy makers justify implementing standardized tests as a means of ensuring quality education for all students. At the federal level, US Secretary of Education Rod Paige, in his forward to What to Know and Where to Go: a parents’ guide to No Child Left Behind, writes that under ‘this new law, we will strive to provide every boy and girl in America with a high-quality education – regardless of his or her income, ability or background’ (US Department of Education, April 2002, p. 3). NCLB primarily aims to accomplish this goal by requiring that 95% of students be assessed through standardized tests aligned with ‘challenging academic achievement standards’ (US Department of Education, September 2002, p. 4). Many have noted the contradiction between both countries’ stated goal of promoting education innovation through competitive markets while at the same time limiting innovation through curriculum and assessment requirements. Edwards writes that some proponents of markets argued against a national curriculum, stating that: ‘It was illogical ... to free schools to compete for custom and to be rewarded directly for increasing their intake while denying them scope to be different and thereby to secure a distinctive market niche’ (Edwards, 2001, p. 246). Edwards cites conservatives who argued that there had been ‘no need to set a national curriculum, or control examinations or testing, or in any other way control content; the market of parents, children, employers and universities will do that better, more flexibly and more effectively (Sexton, 1999, p. 170)’ (Edwards, 2001, p. 246). But Edwards describes how by the late 1980s there was widespread agreement that some form of national curriculum was desirable and the perceived value of standardized assessments of nationally prescribed school knowledge was necessary to devolve more power to schools and to hold them accountable. Further, the national curriculum went beyond the basics: meeting the needs of the ‘conservative Right, committed to “restoring” traditional educational values and standards, its construction from academic subjects was seen as countering the narrowing effects of a utilitarian obsession with relevance. Strong components of national history and English literature would also contribute to social cohesion’ (Edwards, 2001, p. 247). Diversity While one might assume that the goal of diversity includes responding to and attracting a diverse student body, for policy makers in England diversity refers to freeing schools from their local authorities, in particular the LEAs, which in some places, such as London, promoted progressive and equitable educational reforms. Instead of all schools being controlled by their LEAs, the Education Act of 1988 introduced the possibility for parents to vote to have their school secede from the authority of the LEA and re-establish their school as a grant-maintained school (GMS) financed by the central government and run by its governing body. By 1992 only one of 60 schools had opted to become a GMS. The low number of GMS may be explained by the lack of incentive. While grant-maintained schools no longer have to follow local requirements, they still must abide by the national curriculum and the standardized tests, therefore limiting their innovation. In the United States, some states and the federal government have also been promoting diversity in schools by freeing schools from the authority of local school districts. In New York, for example, anyone, including teachers, parents, not-for-profit, and for-profit organizations, can apply for funding to operate a charter school. To date, some 60 schools have been established, many with ties to corporations that provide traditional didactic curriculum materials, such as the National Heritage Curriculum, and for-profit management corporations, such as Edison. However, while the schools are freed from the requirements of the local district, they are still required to meet state curriculum standards and to give the many standardized tests, including the tests that are required for high-school graduation. That the real rather than stated goal may not be creating diversity but rather controlling schools is reflected in the New York State Education Department’s decision not to permit 28 high schools to continue with successful programs because the schools did not require their students to take the standardized exams that the state requires students to pass in order to graduate from high school. These schools have demonstrated better success in educating students who were, on average, more disadvantaged than the average student in their district. After failing to convince the State

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David Hursh Education Department through documents and artifacts demonstrating their students’ success, the schools brought a lawsuit against the state, only to lose at the three court levels (Hursh & Martina, 2002). Privatization While the federal and state governments may be limiting the flexibility and creativity with which public schools can approach teaching and the curriculum, the long-range plan for the federal government may be to replace public schools with private. Socially conservative and neo-liberal foundations and think tanks heavily influence the Bush administration. Laitsch et al (2002) summarize the optimistic views of several influential conservative think tanks regarding the power of market competition and choice to transform education radically for the better. Organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the Education Leaders Council emphasize the ‘principles of individual, economic, and political freedom; [and] private enterprise’ (Hoover Institution’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes [CREDO]) and ‘diversity, competition and choice’ (Thomas B. Fordham Foundation). Leaders from these organizations advise and move in and out of leadership positions in the current Bush administration, forming the ‘brain trust’ behind the administration’s support for educational markets and the privatization of public education. The Department of Education, to an unprecedented degree, has thrown its support behind privatization by allocating funds to organizations that promote vouchers and to a US$50 million experimental voucher program in Washington, DC (Miner, 2004, p. 9). In Rethinking Schools, Barbara Miner describes how the Bush administration siphons funds from public schools to pay private corporations. As described earlier, under NCLB, students in schools failing to make AYP are offered supplemental tutoring primarily through for-profit and faith-based corporations. Consequently, ‘so-called failing schools’, most often financially distressed urban schools, have funds taken from their budget and given to private corporations (Miner, 2004, p. 10). Furthermore, from 2001 to 2003 the Bush administration granted US$77.6 million to groups dedicated to privatization through voucher programs. These groups aim to replace public schools with private schools. Miner shows how the NCLB legislation supports the administration’s goal of privatizing education. The leaders of the organizations receiving funding to promote or put in place voucher programs desire that NCLB increases parents’ and students’ frustration with the public schools, leading to more support for privatization. For example, Howard Fuller, founder of the pro-voucher organization Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), in a 2002 interview with the National Governors Association, said: ‘Hopefully, in years to come the [NCLB] law will be amended to allow families to choose private schools as well as public schools’ (cited in Miner, 2004, p. 11). Similarly, in England education is seen as an opportunity for corporations to ‘produce human capital for competitiveness in the global economy’ and ‘to open up state education systems to private education-for-profit companies’ (Hatcher, 2003, p. 1). For example: • School inspections and professional development, previously carried out by the state, are now conducted by private corporations (Hatcher, 2003, p. 4). • Corporations can sponsor ‘specialist schools’, and through their sponsorship gain the ability to appoint the majority of the school board and control the direction and curriculum of the school. While corporations cannot now make a profit from their sponsorships, conservatives are hoping to eliminate that restriction (Peterson, 2004, p. 32). • Schools are encouraged to market their curriculum: one school has made $10 million profit over two years by selling its courses that prepare students for exams (Peterson, 2004, p. 34). However, notes Edwards (2001), ‘the theoretically perfect mechanism of the education voucher continued to be avoided as impractical’ (p. 246). Instead, the Labour government has welcomed privately and school-funded scholarships; the expansion of the specialist schools program, ‘an essential component of which is the matching of business sponsorship with government grants. Potentially even more significant has been its willingness to experiment with replacing publicly “owned” and democratically accountable education provision by public-private partnerships, and to allow private take-over of “failing” schools and LEAs’ (Edwards, 2001, p. 248).

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Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability Contradictions and Tensions In the previous section I alluded to several contradictions in neo-liberal policies. In this last section I want to expand on those contradictions in order to raise questions about the future of these policies. The first neo-liberal policy contradiction is between the notion that markets are selfregulating and the reality that they require significant governmental intervention in the everyday lives of teachers and students in the form of standards, testing, and reporting. The second contradiction is between desiring competitive markets to promote innovation and diversity while constraining innovation by curriculum standards: in England by a national curriculum and highstakes standardized tests. Third, markets are meant to promote competitive individualism; however, some governments, most notably the Blair government’s efforts to develop an ‘inclusive society’ and the Clinton administration’s notion that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, have realized that individualism can be carried to an extreme. Lastly, while the reforms are promoted as guaranteeing a quality education for all, because, particularly in the United States, the tests are flawed and because the culture of testing and choice is leading to increasing disparity between schools, the stated goals are unobtainable. Markets are preferable in education, argue their proponents, because they more efficiently allocate goods and services, and ‘are more equitable, in that they are responsive to the needs and desires of their clients (as opposed to public sector bureaucracies characterized by quasi-monopoly status and therefore provider capture); and more democratic in that they maximize the freedom of individuals to choose ... unhindered by the state’ (Robertson, 2000, p. 174). Further, markets, they assume, permit ‘spontaneous exchanges between individuals’ (Thrupp & Willmott, 2003, p. 18) and provide individuals with the opportunity to make informed choices based on the available data. However, as Thrupp & Willmott point out, all markets, ranging from international trade, to local farmers’ markets, to school choice, depend on the state for regulation. They quote Sayer, who wrote: ‘Yet far from being an unnecessary interference, the state is a normal feature of real markets, as a precondition for their existence’ (Sayer, 1995, p. 87). The necessity of state regulation of educational markets is born out by the increasing intervention of the state in education through standards, testing, and the curriculum. No longer are schools locally controlled; rather, local decisions are based on the requirements of regional or national governments. State regulation exists in the form of standardized testing and reporting (whether as ‘school report cards’ in New York or ‘league tables’ in England) and bureaucratic structures in which preferences are recorded and selections made. Markets, argue Thrupp & Willmott, do not solve the problem of adequately preparing students given our unequal institutions, inadequate funding, and the focus on preparing students for tests rather than the complex and varied skills required for real learning (Thrupp & Willmott, 2003, p. 236). Given that markets neither eliminate or reduce bureaucracy and state intervention in education, nor improve learning, it remains to be seen how long markets endure as the basis of education. Second, while neo-liberals and neoconservatives argued that market forces would promote diversity in the school curriculum and pedagogy, instituting curriculum requirements and standardized tests has undermined possibilities for such innovation. As described earlier, markets bring with them an increased level of bureaucracy. Further, neoconservatives have also desired to control the curriculum. In the United States, the federal Department of Education has, for the first time, limited the curriculum that schools may implement by requiring schools to use federal funding for only ‘approved curriculum programs’, programs that reflect the government’s criticism of current approaches to teaching literacy and require, instead, the teaching of reading through the use of phonics and direct instruction (Coles, 2003). In England, ‘during the 1980s the central government and the DES [Department of Education and Science] asserted centralized control over the curriculum, with teacher input and influence scaled down’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 37). In the late 1990s, New Labour pushed further, specifying specific teaching methods in math and literacy, and how much time is to be devoted to individual, group, or whole-class instruction (Campbell, 2001, p. 39). Lastly, that the New York State Education Department required 28 successful secondary schools to scrap large parts of their successful teaching methods and, instead, prepare students for the state’s standardized exams may indicate that those in power are more interested in control rather than innovation.

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David Hursh The third tension focuses on the negative outcomes resulting from an ideology of individualism. Conservative governments in England, following neo-liberal doctrine, sought to shift responsibility for economic and social equality away from society and on to the individual. Such efforts included the creation not only of markets in which, theoretically, individuals would be responsible for their own educational and vocational choices, but also of a social ideology in which the notion of shared community responsibility itself is denigrated. This ideology is reflected most famously in Margaret Thatcher’s statement that there is ‘no such thing as society’, which Gillborn & Youdell describe as ‘perfectly encapsulat[ing] an ideological drive between providers and consumers’ (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000, p. 39). Further, Thatcher stated that: ‘[t]here are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first’ (Thatcher, 1993, pp. 626-627, cited in Gillborn & Youdell, 2000, p. 39). However, as Levitas (1998) describes, it has not been as easy to abandon society as the Tories had hoped. New Labour has sought to reinscribe community, albeit for the purposes of reducing dependency on the state by ensuring that all who can work do (Levitas, 1998, p. 46), and of reducing crimes by the ‘socially excluded’. These ideas are reflected in a speech by Tony Blair: I think it is time we abandoned the notion of leaving everything to some nebulous concept of society or focusing entirely on individual responsibility. We should replace these ideas instead with a concept of shared responsibility in which we act as a country to create communities in which individuals are given opportunities but accept their obligations, where they are given rights but have responsibilities, and where we understand that ... the well-developed individual, capable of playing a strong and vibrant part in society, is likely to arise best from a strong and vibrant community. (Blair, 1994, p. 90) Such policy changes, however, while reinstating a notion of community, argue for access to opportunity and not equality. Those in power are concerned with ensuring that citizens feel that they have or had opportunities, whatever the inequalities (Levitas, 1998, p. 44). In both England and the United States, current rhetoric emphasizes increasing opportunity through educational markets and preparing students for employment. However, opportunity does not equal equality and, as Levitas points out, under capitalism, with its need for profit and expanding markets, not only does not promote equality but also undermines it, as those who have capital – in whatever form: economic, cultural, and social – are in the best position to gain from it (Levitas, 1998, p. 188). Neo-liberal policies have resulted in increasing inequality. Labour’s efforts to reinstall community will not be sufficient in counteracting the effects of market capitalism. Lastly, while the reforms are promoted as a way to ensure opportunity for all, the educational systems in both countries have grown less rather than more equal. In the United States, the implementation of standards and standardized testing in states such as Texas and New York has resulted in more students leaving school, students living in poverty and students of color being forced out of school, and increasing disparity between the wealthier and poorer districts (Haney, 2000; Orfield et al, 2004; Winter, 2004). In England, many have raised criticisms of the educational reforms, pointing out, in particular, how market systems exacerbate inequality. For example, Gillborn & Youdell (2000) show how the system of open enrollment, in which schools receive funding based on the number of students in the school, regardless of how many of the students have disabilities, are from low-income families, or are English-language learners, provides disincentives to lessen inequality. In a market, schools compete for the more advantaged students who are more likely to raise the school’s aggregated test scores, which are widely distributed in the annual school ‘league tables’, and who require few financial resources arising from poverty, disabilities, or having English as their second language. Those schools with high test scores are likely to admit high-scoring students to their few openings, while those schools with low scores are desperate to retain their few ‘high flyers’. Schools with significant populations of children of color, economically disadvantaged children, and English-language learners are likely to struggle to keep their more capable students and even to retain their enrollment. Schools that are already advantaged are likely to become more so. Moreover, note Gillborn & Youdell, not only does the market system exacerbate the inequalities between schools, but the competitive examination system also exacerbates inequalities within schools. Because secondary schools are judged on what percentage of their students attains

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Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability five or more grades of A to C in their examinations, schools focus on those students who are seen as likely to achieve a grade of C or more, and pay less attention to those who are likely to be failures, again typically students of color, students with disabilities, and students who are Englishlanguage learners (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). Students who are disadvantaged are neither sought after by schools nor, if admitted, likely to receive much attention. Over the last several decades, neo-liberal and neoconservative politicians have reshaped educational policy around the ideology that schools need to incorporate markets, competition, and choice in order to prepare students for the global economy. As part of a global movement, often described as one to which there is ‘no alternative’, we should not be surprised to see countries carrying out similar policies. In this article I have focused on choice, markets, curriculum and assessment, diversity, and privatization. Differences between the United States and England can be explained, in part, by the historically smaller role the national government has played in education in the United States than England. Until the Bush administration, the federal government, which funds less than 10% of elementary and secondary education programs, had little say in curriculum and assessment. Historically, the national government in the United Kingdom has always played a larger role in primary and secondary education, and has increased that role over the last three decades. However, the new policies leave numerous contradictions and tensions unresolved, which create openings for more progressive reforms. In particular, neo-liberal reforms can be criticized for not improving education and resulting in increasing inequality. In the United States, resistance to NCLB is emerging for several reasons. First, while few have voiced concerns about the high rate of urban schools found not to be making ‘adequate yearly progress’ and, therefore, to be ‘in need of improvement’, as more suburban middle-class schools receive the same designation, as they must under the unachievable testing goals required by NCLB, the whole system comes into question (Dillon, 2004). Parents question a federal rating system that designates their school as failing when the school is rated as highly successful by many at the local and state levels. Second, states are beginning to resist both the additional costs associated with the NCLB requirements and the federal interference with state’s rights. The state of Connecticut recently announced that it planned to sue the federal government, arguing that NCLB ‘forces Connecticut to spend millions on new tests without providing sufficient additional aid’. Other states are resisting the regulations. For example, the Utah state government is considering a measure that will give higher priority to the state’s educational goals than to the federal law (Dillon, 2005). Third, the public is becoming increasingly aware that NCLB and other federal efforts are aimed at privatizing education. The billions of dollars currently siphoned off from public schools and sent to private tutoring agencies are coming under question as problems with the tutoring programs become apparent. School district officials and parents are revealing that some programs are recruiting students with gifts such as computers and then, after receiving up to US$2000 from the federal government for each child, are failing to deliver services. Further, while the federal government aims to hold public schools accountable, there is no effort to develop regulations and to hold accountable the private tutoring companies. This lack of regulation by the federal government is not an oversight. Michael Petrilli, an official with the federal Department of Education, recently stated: ‘We [the Department of Education] want as little regulation as possible so that the market can be as vibrant as possible’ (Saulny, 2005). Criticism of the increasing inefficiencies in privately provided tutoring is revealing the inability of privatization and markets to provide social services. The education reforms of the last two decades have resulted in systems that emphasize individualism, competition, markets, and auditing through standardized tests and other accountability measures. However, the reforms are not without their contradictions and have negatively affected teachers, students, parents, and schools. As the contradictions and negative consequences become increasingly apparent, the possibilities for democratic reform emerge. References Apple, M. (1996) Cultural Politics and Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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David Hursh Apple, M. (2001) Educating the ‘Right’ Way: markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York: Routledge. Ball, S. (1990) Politics and Policymaking in Education: explorations in policy sociology. London: Routledge. Ball, S. (1994) Education Reform: a critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ball, S. (2003) Class Strategies and the Education Market: the middle classes and social advantage. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S.J., Bowe, R. & Gerwirtz, S. (1996) School Choice, Social Class, and Distinction: the realization of social advantage in education, Journal of Educational Policy, 11(1), pp. 89-112. Blair, A. (1994) Sharing Responsibility for Crime, in A. Coote (Ed.) Families, Children and Crime, London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Bowe, R. & Ball, S., with Gold, A. (1992) Reforming Education and Changing Schools: case studies in policy sociology. London: Routledge. Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1986) Democracy and Capitalism: property, community, and the contradictions of modern thought. New York: Basic Books. Broadfoot, P. (2001) Empowerment or Performativity? Assessment Policy in the Late Twentieth Century, in R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice, . New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Campbell, G. (2001) The Colonization of the Primary Curriculum, in R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Coles, G. (2003) Reading the Naked Truth: literacy, legislation and lies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Dale, R. (1989) The State and Education Policy. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Dillon, S. (2004) Bad School or Not? Conflicting Ratings Baffle the Parents, New York Times, 5 September. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com Or http://www.lexisnexis.com/universe/document? m=edl5650e62baf92ealb0062bf33bdof5& docnum=34 &wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVb& md5=fd0c0753ab6b8a6a97f2e886f30472 Dillon, S. (2005) Connecticut to Sue U.S. Over Cost of Testing Law, New York Times, 6 April. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/education/06child.html Edwards, T. (2001) Educational Performance, Markets and the State: present and future prospects, in R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Furlong, J. & Phillips, R. (2001) Introduction and Rationale, in R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Gewirtz, S. (2002) The Managerial School: post-welfarism and social justice in education. New York: Routledge. Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. & Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice, and Equity in Education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gillborn, D. & Youdell, D. (2000) Rationing Education: policy, practice, reform and equity. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Haney, W. (2000) The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(41). Available at: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41 Hatcher, R. (2003) Business Agenda and School Education in England. 12 December. Available at: http://www.socialist-teacher.org/dossiers.asp?d=y&id=75 Hursh, D. & Apple, M. (1983) The Fiscal Crisis, Politics and Education: a critical analysis of the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, unpublished manuscript. Hursh, D. & Martina, C.A. (2002) Resisting the Tyranny of Tests: the battle for New York, paper presented at the Discourse Power Resistance conference, Plymouth, 12-14 April. Hursh, D. & Martina, C.A. (2003) Neoliberalism and Schooling in the U.S.: how state and federal government education policies perpetuate inequality, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 1(2). Available at: www.jceps.com Laitsch, D., Shaker, P. & Heilman, E. (2002) Teacher Education, Pro-market Policy and Advocacy Research, Teaching Education, 13(4), pp. 251-272. Levitas, R. (1998) The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour. London: Macmillan. Miner, B. (2004) Seed Money for Conservatives, Rethinking Schools, 18(4), pp. 9-11. National Commission on Excellence in Education (1982) A Nation at Risk: a report to the nation and the Secretary of Education. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

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Neo-liberalism, Markets and Accountability New York State School Boards Association (2002) School Choice Transfer Update, 13 December. Available at: http://www.nyssba.org/adnews/misc/thenewaccountability-15.htm on August 28, 2003. Nixon, J., Walker, M. & Baron, S. (2002) The Cultural Mediation of State Policy: the democratic potential of new community schooling in Scotland, Journal of Education Policy, 17(4), pp. 407-421. Orfield, G., Losen, D., Wald, J. & Swanson, C. (2004) Losing Our Future: how minority youth are being left behind by the graduation rate crisis. Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Parenti, C. (1999) Atlas Finally Shrugged: us against them in the me decade, Baffler, 13, pp. 108-120. Peters, M. (1994) Individualism and Community: education and the politics of difference, Discourse, 14(2), pp. 65-78. Peterson, B. (2004) Privatization, English Style, Rethinking Schools, 18(4), pp. 31-34. Phillips, R. & Daugherty, R. (2001) Educational Devolution and Nation Building in Wales: a different ‘Great Debate’? In R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Reay, D. & Ball, S. (1997) Spoilt for Choice: the working classes and educational markets, Oxford Review of Education, 25(1), pp. 89-101. Robertson, S. (2000) A Class Act: changing teachers’ work, the state, and globalizaton. New York: Falmer. Robertson, S. & Lauder, H. (2001) Restructuring the Education/Social Class Relation: a class choice? In R. Phillips & J. Furlong (Eds) Education Reform and the State: twenty-five years of politics, policy, and practice, New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Saulny, S. (2005) A Lucrative Brand of Tutoring Grows Unchecked, New York Times, 4 April. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/education/04tutor.html Sayer, A. (1995) Radical Political Economy: a critique. Oxford: Blackwell. Sexton, S. (1999) Education Policy: the next ten years, in J. Demain (Ed.) Education Policy and Contemporary Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Tabb, W. (2002) Unequal Partners: a primer on globalization. New York: The New Press. Thatcher, M. (1993) The Downing Street Years. London: HarperCollins. Thrupp, M. & Willmott, R. (2003) Educational Management in Managerialist Times: beyond the textual apologists. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Tomlinson, S. (2001) Education in a Post-welfare Society. Buckingham: Open University Press. US Department of Education (April 2002) What to Know and Where to Go: a parents’ guide to No Child Left Behind. Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Office of the Secretary. US Department of Education (September 2002) No Child Left Behind: a desk reference. Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Vilas, C. (1996) Neoliberal Social Policy: managing poverty (somehow), NACLA Report on the Americas, 29(2), pp. 16-21. Whitty, G., Power, S. & Halpin, D. (1998) Devolution and Choice in Education: the school, the state and the market. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Winter, G. (2004) Minority Graduation Rates in New York Called Lowest, New York Times, 26 February. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com OR http://web.lexisnexis.com/universe/document? m=38569c9718b531e3f5e16ef84cb07326& docnum=74 &wchp=d6LbVtzzSkVb&md5=3138c5c3274522e453c 17a51622e6289

DAVID HURSH is Associate Professor in the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA. Besides teaching and writing, he helped establish the Coalition for Common Sense in Education, a group actively working to defend education and to combat high-stakes testing. His recent journal publications include contributions to the British Educational Research Journal, and the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies. He is co-editor of the book Democratic Social Education: social studies for social change. Correspondence: David Hursh, Associate Professor, Teaching and Curriculum, Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Dewey Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA ([email protected]).

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