ABSTRACT
One of the most fascinating developments in post-communist education is the emergence of private schools and reform movements at every level of schooling. Ideologies in support of private education resonate with the liberal, market-oriented philosophies prevailing in the region; the policies of private schools promote and legitimate antistate rhetoric and echo the themes of renewal and transformation heard in other policy realms. Virtually every institution favours democratization and decentralization; the monopoly of the state over the provision of goods and services must be broken. Rigid educational hierarchies must be replaced with schools and teachers who are more responsive to the needs of individual parents and children. The curriculum needs to be completely overhauled; all traces of ideological indoctrination must be expunged. The organization and financing of schools should be lodged in democratically organized community groups; schools should be controlled by the families who can best monitor the education their children receive. Schools must be liberated not only from communist doctrine but from the state as a whole; a free market for schooling should replace state control. These themes lead directly to the assumption that the only workable strategy for eradicating state control of education is to establish new, independent private schools under the control of parents’ groups.
