Choice and selection are now cornerstones of education policies wherever these have been shaped by market economics. Now, as never before, schools can face uncertain futures, because their survival is determined by external factors such as admission policies and parental preferences. Because of the link between schooling, and housing and other public sector services, the implications of increasing choice extends well beyond education. Schools, Markets and Choice Policies brings together the findings of the most comprehensive research ever conducted into choice in secondary education, and provides in-depth context, analysis and discussion. In assessing the impact of choice policies not only upon the education system itself, but also upon wider society, it provides valuable insights into economic and social segregation. A groundbreaking contribution to the debate on the role of choice and market economies in education, this book is essential reading for anyone involved in determining or implementing education policy at all levels.

This book challenges readers to consider the consequences of commercialism and business influences on and in schools. Critical essays examine the central theme of commercialism via a unique multiplicity of real-world examples. Topics include: *privatization of school food services; *oil company ads that act as educational policy statements; *a parent's view of his child's experiences in a school that encourages school-business partnerships; *commercialization and school administration; *teacher union involvement in the school-business partnership craze currently sweeping the nation; *links between education policy and the military-industrial complex; *commercialism in higher education, including marketing to high school students, intellectual property rights of professors and students, and the bind in which professional proprietary schools find themselves; and *the influence of conservative think tanks on information citizens receive, especially concerning educational issues and policy. Schools or Markets?: Commercialism, Privatization, and School-Business Partnerships is compelling reading for all researchers, faculty, students, and education professionals interested in the connections between public schools and private interests. The breadth and variety of topics addressed make it a uniquely relevant text for courses in social and cultural foundations of education, sociology of education, educational politics and policy, economics of education, philosophy of education, introduction to education, and cultural studies in education.

During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem. The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy—thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement.

An economic analysis of schooling markets is developed, emphasizing both the strengths and weaknesses of orthodox analyses. This publication is designed to be accessible to all those concerned with education and economics.

Across the U.S., test publishers, software companies, and research firms are swarming to take advantage of the revenues made available by the No Child Left Behind Act. In effect, the education industry has assumed a central place in the day-to-day governance and administration of public schools—a trend that has gone largely unnoticed by policymakers or the press until now. Drawing on analytic tools, Hidden Markets examines specific domains that the education industry has had particular influence on—home schooling, remedial instruction, management consulting, test development, data management, and staff development. Burch's analysis demonstrates that only when we subject the education industry to systematic and in-depth critical analysis can we begin to demand more corporate accountability and organize to halt the slide of education funds into the market.

A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.

In Market Education: The Unknown History, Andrew J. Coulson explores the educational problems facing parents and shows how these problems can best be addressed. He begins with a discussion of what people want from their school systems, tracing their views of the kinds of knowledge, skills, and values education should impart, and their concerns about discipline, drugs, and violence in schools. Using this survey of goals and attitudes as a guide, Coulson sets out to compare the school systems of civilizations both ancient and modern, seeking to determine which systems achieved the aims of parents and the public at large and which did not. Drawing on the historical evidence of how these various systems operated, Coulson concludes that free educational markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public's needs than state-run school systems have.