ABSTRACT
There are legitimate arguments about whether the rise of hybridised models of education delivery truly represents forms of ‘privatisation’. Yet there is little doubt that these policies push schooling more into the market realm by freeing up both supply and demand sides, thus creating more business-like institutional environments in which public, private and hybridised schools operate, apparently reconfiguring publicly funded education into an individualised private good. Although some researchers have examined the motivations for such policies, and a few others have studied policy impacts on the organisational behaviour of schools, this chapter seeks to understand policy impetus and impact in tandem. Starting with an examination of marketing materials used by charter schools in one of the more competitive areas in the US, the analysis notes how schools sell their services as consumer-style goods in response to competitive pressures of the emerging educational marketplace. Then, the chapter shifts focus to the large philanthropic interests that have been successfully championing these reforms. By examining the backgrounds and positions of these public policymakers, the analysis highlights the business sensibilities undergirding their agendas for public education. While their rhetoric typically highlights concerns about equity, their proposals typically advance a market model that envisions education as a private, consumer-style good. The concluding discussion examines different types of public and private goods in the context of changing institutional environments for schools, and highlights the privatised nature of public policymaking and shifting definitions of expertise in education by perhaps well-meaning but ‘predatory’ elites.
