ABSTRACT
Education policy has become a major focus of academic attention over recent years: at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), for example, the number of sessions designated as relating to education policy increased by more than 600 percent in less than 20 years. The wording of the Arizona statutes is bold and revealing; the articles enforce a neoliberal world view as the only permissible basis for action. Neo-liberalism is a conservative perspective that stresses the importance of individual self-interest and free market operations as the basis for the most efficient and just form of society. Traditional mainstream approaches to education tend to imagine the history of policy as a series of incremental steps leading gradually towards improved attainments and ever greater degrees of equity and social inclusion. Critical perspectives, however, view policy very differently.
