Public Choice Theorists and Market Theorists advocate for a market and/or businesslike approach to education (also view Video 1 in United States of America in Neoliberalism in Education Policies from a variety of settings). That approach is based on the idea of applying the structures, processes and dynamics of market and business to educational institutions. In other words, it means treating all involved in the educational system as producers and consumers, as commodities and objects.
Thus, managerialism has been introduced to education and its systems as well as other aspects of society through quite a persuasive and indicative discourse. For example, New Zealand’s Treasury published a report in 1984 that stated that the “aim of management should be the implementation of systems in the public system that can perform broadly the same role for the public service as the price system does in the private sector” (Treasury, 1984, cited in Fitzsimons, 2011, p. 8). Neoliberal managerialism has become such a dominant and accepted discourse, that those who do not desire it are considered absurd.
These features exemplify some of the various ways in which marketization, another facet of managerialism, has been affecting education in this neoliberal model.
- Schools now have control of their own budgets
- Private organizations were allowed to replace "failing" local education authorities or school boards.
- Creation of diverse and differentiated opportunities such as comprehensives and selective schools, private schools, church schools, city technology colleges, grant-maintained schools.
- Providing information (brochures, annual reports, etc.) to the public/consumer on a regular basis, so they could make informed choices.
- Encouraging entrepreneurialism and alternative income generation (for example parental and voluntary donations).
Critique 3.1
Running any education system as a market or businesslike model has accentuated the already large gap between the different classes of society, increasing pre-existing inequalities, and at no point in time trying to alleviate them. Ball (1993) clearly states it: “the operation and effects of an education market benefit certain class groups and fractions to the detriment and disadvantage of others.”
Video 1: Omar Aktouf
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Teachers & Students
Deskilling of the profession
In this neoliberal era, the teaching profession is actually being deskilled. As Weiner (2007) explains:
Defining the highly qualified teacher as one who has knowledge only of the context to be taught and not of the contexts in which schools function or of students’ characteristics as learners, parallels the neoliberal stance that teaching can be defined as the transmission of content and that schools have no social or political responsibilities beyond providing an
education that is de facto vocational training (p. 166)
Furthermore, teachers have lost their autonomy by being “stripped of their professionalism” (Tomlinson, 2007, p. 173). Now all they are expected to do is “deliver a regular [and standardized] curriculum, assess children by preset national tests, and policed by new and expanding inspection regimes” (Tomlinson, 2007, p. 173). And all of this is made under the banner of accountability and assuring that all students are receiving an equally qualified education. Therefore, since teaching under neoliberalism consists soley of transmitting content aligned with standardized tests, teacher education is devalued. Anyone can be a teacher under neoliberalism - just abandon all of your creativity and follow the market rules.
Standardization and Accountability
“In the name of improving educational quality and holding schools and school personnel more accountable for their professional practice, the state government enacted a set of standardized controls to monitor children’s learning and teachers’ classroom behavior” (McNeil, 2000, p. 4).
In the global market , it is inevitable that these principles and ideas would impact the educational system. The main channels the market uses to accomplish that are through standardization and accountability.
One might ask why would business back up or influence education. According to Goldberg and Traiman (2001), several reasons are behind their actions.
First, the basis for standards relies on the belief that “schools should expect more from children – they should work harder, tackle more demanding material, perform at higher levels, learn more skills, and become more accomplished” (Goldberg & Traiman, 2001, p. 91). The standards by which the students/future workforce and employees will be working are set since the elementary and secondary schooling. Furthermore, the bar is very high for students; therefore only the best (the cream of the top) will gain access to very closed and selective positions in this global market economy.
Secondly, from the standardization advocates’ perspective, “assessment reinforces performance” (Goldberg & Traiman, 2001, p. 93). To succeed in the marketplace, working hard is not enough. Standardized tests are needed to reinforce academic performance. Standardized tests and their results also provide the parties involved (parents, administrators, governments, employers) with all the information they need to “compare student performance to some stated level of achievement or competence, whether in the international arena or in the classrooms of the local school” (p. 93).
Third, according to this line of thought, standards yield accountability. ‘Being accountable’ means that someone has the obligation, the duty to give a detailed description on how things are doing. To that effect, pressure is put on teachers, principals, vice-principals. They are required to report, describe, explain, or justify how students are faring and if they are meeting the curriculum expectations and attaining the required standards. And depending on the students’ results and performance to the standardized tests, consequences are applied. There is more funding for those schools who met the required standards or penalties for those who fail. Therefore to achieve all these goals, standardized assessments, standardized curricula and programs, are actively implemented in educational systems, under the neoliberal agenda.
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Critique 3.2.2
Those standardized tests came from outside the classroom, therefore outside the educational system (McNeil, 2000). They are created to please and favor the market place that asks for a certain standard and “sameness” (McNeil, 2000) because they want all their workers to demonstrate the same skills, the same aptitudes.
The […] teachers and their students […] struggled to hold onto school lessons that held credibility in the world outside schools, to lessons that sprang from teachers’ passions and children’s curiosities, to lessons that built a cumulative base of new understanding for these students, many of whom were counting on the […] schools to open previously closed doors to college and careers” (McNeil, 2000, p. 5).
This excerpt from McNeil’s (2000) article, Standardization, Defensive Teaching, and the Problems of Control, clearly states all that schooling, teachers and students have lost under government’s neoliberal standardization agenda in the educational system, and all in the “name of improving educational quality” (p. 4). As McNeil puts it, teachers’ and students’ roles in this “improvement” era have been completely and fundamentally transformed and changed.
First of all there is a reduction of quality and quantity of what is taught and learned. Having new and standardized curricula imposed to them for the ultimate (if not sole) purpose of being assess with standardized controls, forced teachers to review their teaching, “the scope and quality of course content” because nowadays all that is required from them is that their students pass those tests. What that implies also is that teachers are forced (or not) to teach “phony curricula” (p. 5), to teach to the tests in order to make sure that their students are well prepared for them; which practices are in total contradiction and opposition to everything effective teaching and learning, and education as well, stands for.
That being said, such practices (whichever they are) lead to another consequence which is doing more damage: the students’ role. In these new settings and with these new practices, their role has been completely altered and not for the better, according to McNeil. They are no longer active participants. They are no longer thinkers. They are no longer contributors to their own learning experiences. “In the name of improving educational quality”, all those positive aspects and gains of their schooling have been taking away from them, ‘silencing’ them completely and transforming them into mere recipients of the knowledge the marketplace wants them to possess. Because essentially it is all about a marketplace preparing its future workforce. This means that the school ‘factory’ has a particular body of knowledge (in the form of the new curricula) that absolutely needs to be transmitted at all costs. In fact in this market-driven educational system that emphasizes standards and accountability, the students are considered like factory workers that are not required to think but are asked to simply execute pre-set tasks.
Furthermore, when considering the standardized curricula, Rezai-Rashti (2009) explains, based on teachers’ comments, how these new curricula actually negatively affects both minority groups and applied stream students. That proves that the push towards standardization also increases the gap between “the quality of education for the poor and minority youth and that of more privileged students” (McNeil, 2000, p. 3). Therefore inequities are created and sometimes reinforced. Situation that is quite ironic because these ‘reforms’ set forth are also promoted under the principle of equity; and to the powers implementing that agenda, equity refers to “sameness”, to uniformity. But it is proven that sameness and uniformity are very far from what is happening every day in the classrooms.
Given the scope and the spread of the standardization movements in the educational systems, there is a certain tendency to agree with McNeil when he questions all actors implicated in the system’s “capacity to provide a substantive education that is not driven by, not stratified by, and not reduced by the kinds of standardized tests being increasingly adopted across the states under the guise of “raising standards” ” (p. 7). Can such goal even be achieved?
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Parents
Relationship with administration
In accordance to the neoliberal agenda, there is an educational restructuring taking place in the system and one aspect of which has to do with “reorganizing the relationships between schools and those social institutions (such as families)” (Griffith, 2001, p. 85).
To that regard, the roles, the expectations, the perceptions and the reactions from both parties are not as clearly defined and separated as one might think; there are lots of gray areas that make that reorganizing quite challenging.
Other than the fact that “educational restructuring shifts more work and responsibility for managing children’s education from school to family settings” (David, 1998, cited in Griffith, 2001, p. 85), one other side of the issue here is the fact that responsibility and charges are taken out of the actors who traditionally are responsible for the education of the children (administrators, governments, and now businesses). Therefore, if the final “product”, the results of that shift is disastrous, the blames will solely rest on the parents.
Furthermore, as previously stated, there are lots of gray areas in that parent-school relationship reorganizing and the fact that parents now have choice options in their children’s schooling, only adds to the challenge. Thus, through the privatization of schools and the various options offered to them, parents, in a certain way and at a certain level, have more rights and demand that they are respected, or they withdraw their children. However, where there are rights, there are also obligations; and the latter are what the schools, in return, require of and from parents in order to accept their children. And they are sure parents and legal guardians will buy into their discourse because they “fear for the future of their children”; they fear that their children will not have the opportunities, the possibilities and the advantages to succeed in life if they do not abide by these programs.
Once again, no clean cut, no define lines. And “a [definite] shift in education for democracy or citizenship to education for a global labor market” (Ohmann, 1997; Smith, 1998, cited in Griffith, p. 83).
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School choice
Neoliberalism project a rather romanticized and utopian vision of the marketization of education, which offers to parents and legal guardians the “choice” as a fundamental right.
Video 2: Shopping for school: A debate on school choice in Ontario
by Your Voice
To ensure that parents and legal guardians do have that right to choose, various types of schools have been created and put on the market and they have been seriously growing and increasing. They are:
According to Brigham, da Costa and Peters (2003), “Public School refers to a school that is owned and administered by an elected school board and funded at least partly by a Ministry of education” (p. 9).
Charter schools are schools that are funded publicly, by taxpayer’s money but are run and managed by private, independent or quasi-independent organizations or groups, under a charter or contract whose terms they have to abide by.
A charter board generally governs the charter school on a typically 5-year period.
Being publicly funded, they have to admit all applicants and if they are over-subscribed, process by lottery. But being managed by a private group, these schools have the choice and the freedom to implement whichever educational approaches suit their purposes and objectives.
That situation suits the managers very well since “Choice and competition work to the consumer’s advantage and satisfaction” (Walberg & Bast, 2003, p. 239). Adding to that is the fact that the charter schools offer a wide “diversity of philosophies and educational methods” (Walberg & Bast, 2003, p. 240) that appeal greatly to parents-consumers.
Cookson (1996, cited in Brigham, da Costa & Peters, 2003, p. 10) qualifies charter schools as being “truly hybrid” because “although they are still within the public school structure, they rely on market principles to attract students.”
While at the same time they have certain autonomy, they are accountable for whatever they do: “They must abide by civil rights laws and publicly report financial, achievement, and other information” (Walberg & Bast, 2003, p. 239).
Brigham, da Costa and Peters (2003) define private schools as followed:
Private School is used to refer to an autonomous or independent school. It is autonomous from the state system of education and is not run by a public school board. It may be independent for cultural, pedagogical, philosophical or religious reasons. Funding for this type of school may be derived partly from the state through public coffers and/or through private means. It may have varying degrees of autonomy and control over its budget, hiring of school faculty and personnel, curriculum or fund-raising. (p. 9)
According to the neoliberals, owners of private schools aim to please their consumers, parents and students; and the competition among schools will attract both students and resources. Therefore, the best ones stay open and the bad/unpopular ones are forced to close or get better” (Governor Bush, quoted in Paulu, 1989).
Furthermore, the tenants of that thought assume that all parents and legal guardians (consumers) have the same “disposition” towards school choice. In other words, if the schools get better (through that choice/screening process, among other things), “the magic of competition ensures that every consumer is happy.”
Voucher schemes consist of taking money that is normally and originally allocated to public schooling and giving it to parents who wish to send their child/children to private schools. In other words, “parents get public assistance to pay for tuition at private nonprofit and for-profit schools” (Walberg & Bast, 2003, p. 231).
That system is based on this assumption that paying for a private attendance will cost less to the state than actually funding the public school.
Another description of educational voucher is an “allocation of public funds to be spent on a child’s education that can be used at whatever school the child goes to [private, public or both]; i.e. the funds follow the child” (Brigham, da Costa & Peters, 2003, p. 15).
For the voucher system’s supporters, that program is a means to address and tackle equity issues for minority groups or families living in poverty. Nevertheless, according to certain, the vouchers are just a “way to enable market forces to improve education” (Brigham, da Costa & Peters, 2003, p. 15), whether they are publicly or privately funded.
For Brigham, da Costa and Peters (2003), home schooling represents the parents’ “choice to educate their children at home rather than rely on public or private schools” (p. 24); whilst Walberg and Bast (2003) see it as “the most extreme form of decentralization and privatization of education” (p. 244).
The rationale behind it is that parents think and are certain that they can do a better job at education their offspring. They have more control of what, when, why, where and how their children are taught.
More and more parents are actually choosing that option for their children, even when the education establishment objects it by stating that “children are properly socialized in a homeschool environment” (Walberg & Bast, 2003, p. 245).
Critique 3.3.2
Referring to certain authors, one of the ways to understand the gap between the neoliberal theory and the actual practices on the field can be through that notion of choice that is offered to parents, legal guardians and students. But we must ask ourselves, what choice exactly do they have? 
The fact that parents and guardians are offered several option of schooling from which to choose for their child/children does not necessarily means they can afford to do so. And as Ball (1993) puts it, “Parents can express a choice for the school they want for their child”, but if certain criteria (academic, financial, social, racial) are not respected, that wish stays as it is: a wish” (also read United Kingdom in Neoliberalism in Education Policies from a variety of settings).
Therefore, social inequalities and inequities remain but are hidden under the guise of ‘choice’. Admission and screening procedures in many schools privilege “good” students, the ones that fit the school-producer’s shoe according to the “values, interests and concerns of certain class groups and fractions” (Ball, 1993).
On the same thought, Neil Kinnock (1981, cited in Walford, 1990, p. ix) made a valid point regarding private schools that are in fact a “major source of perpetuated division and the demarcation of privilege, status, power, opportunity and expectation that go with it” and represent the “very cement in the wall that divides […] society.” Walford (1990) also adds that parents who send their children to private schools are not likely to fight for the improvement of the public school system; and parents do not always choose what is best for their children’s welfare and well-being and intellectual growth but rather are concerned with prestige, advantages, high standards, social status, etc. Walford continues by saying that the mere presence of these schools encourages the belief that education can be seen as an individual consumer commodity, when in “in practice, each child is not just an individual or a member of a family, but is also a member of society” (p. 106).
Video 3: Dr. Robyn R. Jackon
CEO, Mindsteps Inc. and author of Never work harder than your students
says the privatization of schools will create inequities in the public school system.
Furthermore, whenever there is choice, there will always be disadvantages and gaps between those making these choices because not everyone has the same resources, the same possibilities and the same opportunities. That reinforces the notion of “winners” and “losers”. They are the “beneficiaries” and the “victims” of the market because “the unequal distribution of income in society may bias certain markets in favour of the rich and against the poor” and “to the extent that these and other imperfections are serious, markets are less likely to generate the diversity, quality and level of services that consumers wants” (Ball, 1993).
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Privatization
Privatization in education has taken various forms and many shapes which are similar to what is found in other sectors of society. One of them has to do with parents contributions to the schools’ maintenance. What happens is that parents are asked to financially contribute to the school’s maintenance and other educational expenditures because in the neoliberal’s maxim about the reduction of the nation-state intervention in public affairs, less funding is going to the public schools that are facing increasing school-related expenses. Another aspect of that privatization is edu-business, which means private business become the providers of educational and learning programs, may they be training sessions, seminars, one-year certificates, two-year or four-year diplomas or e-learning. This is all done for profit.
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References
Ball, S. (1993). Education markets, choice and social class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3-19.
Brigham, S. M., da Costa, J., & Peters, F. (Dec. 2003). Choice and Accountability in Canadian Education – Literature Review. Prepared for the Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families (CUP).
Devine, N. (2004). Education and Public Choice: A critical account of the invisible hand in education. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.
Goldberg, M., & Traiman, S. L. (2001). Why business backs education standards. Brookings Papers on Education Policy, p. 75-129. doi: 10.1353/pep.2001.0006
Grant, N. (2009). Foreword. In Hill, D., & Kumar, R. (Ed), Global Neoliberalism and Education and its consequences (pp. vii-xvii). New York, New York: Routledge.
Griffith, A. (2001). Texts, tyranny, and transformation: Educational restructuring in Ontario. In Portelli, J. P., & and Solomon, R. P. (Eds.), The erosion of democracy in education: From critique to possibilities (pp. 83-98). Calgary: Detselig.
Harris, S. (2007). The governance of education: How neo-liberalism is transforming policy and practice. London – New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Klees, S. J. (2008). A quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: misleading analyses and failed policies. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 6(4), 311-348.
Leiding, D. (2008). The hows and whys of alternative education: Schools where students thrive. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
McMeekin, R. W. (2010). Chile – Vouchers and Beyond. In Rotberg, I. C. (Ed), Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform – Second Edition (pp. 77-101). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of School Reform: Educational Costs of Standardized Testing. New York, New York: Routledge.
Normore, A. H. (2004). The edge of chaos: School administrators and accountability. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(1), 55-77.
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