ABSTRACT
The present study draws on the conservative modernism argument by Apple (2006) and the power/knowledge discussions in privatization by Ball (2013), to portray, compare, and contrast the challenges faced by the private school teachers and school principals in Turkey and in the Arab education system in Israel. The neoliberal tendencies evident in the privatization processes generate a variety of personal and professional pressures for the general directors, school principals, and teachers who work for these private schools. This brief comparison of two country contexts exploring the challenges of private school educators leads us to question the neoliberal policies determining the context and operation of privatization in education. The corporate agenda, market forces(Tooley & Dixon, 2006), and marketization of teacher and principal labor, deviating from core educational ideals, are powerful in shaping the work of school leaders and teachers, whereby they find themselves enduring stress and dilemmas.
