Creating profits by creating failures: standards, markets, and inequality in education

Abstract

Serious questions need to be raised about the educational ‘reforms’ now underway in a number of nations. Research largely on the English and American experience(s) are used to document some of the hidden negative effects of two connected strategies of reform: neoliberal policies for marketization and neo-conservative policies for imposing national curricula, national standards, and national testing. The combination of these reforms has led to an increase not a decrease in inequalities. Among its results are the production of both a ‘thin’ version of dominant pedagogical and curricular forms and of the social privileges that accompany them.