ABSTRACT
The privatization of education involves the transformation of public schooling on the model of the market. It discusses the terrain of public school privatization in the United States through economic, cultural, and political registers. The chapter discusses how educational privatization relates to the broader neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies, policies, and political projects. It argues that these authoritarian ideologies, policies, and political projects, which are global in nature, threaten the development of forms of education conducive to the expansion of democratic social relations. Contemporary initiatives to privatize public schools can only be understood in relation to the intersections of neoliberal and neoconservative ideology that presently dominate politics. In education, neoliberalism has taken hold with tremendous force, remaking educational common sense and pushing forward the privatization and deregulation agendas. Neoconservatives readily accept the entrepreneurial spirit of neoliberalism because they can prostheletize through standardization.
