ABSTRACT
Accountability has functioned as the primary mechanism for bringing teachers back under control and eliminating the "temporary confusion of purpose". The ultimate goal of the neo-liberal/neoconservative alliance in education demands the privatization of schools. Accountability replaces the principle of autonomy with the principle of heteronomy, and replaces the principle of community with the principle of individualism. Externally, corporations have always demanded autonomy from state power to maximize profits and to exercise state power to maximize profits further. In this sense, there is nothing neo- (new) about neoliberalism. Internally, market institutions express the principle of heteronomy even more intensely. America's schools had angered the market and threatened to incur its wrath. Through their mediocre performance, schools subjected the future of the nation to economic damnation by failing to satisfactorily increase the use value of its children relative to the more pious efforts of other nations. Massive privatization of schools, however, hinges on what happens between now and the year 2014.
