ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the theme of the book, which analyzes and discusses findings from a study that examines school district enactment of market-oriented education finance (MOEF) policy in K-12 public education in British Columbia, Canada. The chapter describes the context of the research, the research methods used, and the conceptual framework. The study helps fill a gap in the existing research on the neoliberalization of public education by focusing on policy that introduces an entrepreneurial approach to financing a public education system and by examining the role of school district administrators (SDAs) in policy enactment. Specifically, the study examines the approaches school districts employ to enact the policy, the spatial dimensions of policy enactment, the (in)equity of finance and provision of educational programming across geographically diverse school districts, and the ways in which the subjectivities of SDAs are implicated in policy enactment. The study contributes to a contextualized understanding of the neoliberalization of K-12 public education and educational leadership, resulting in the marketization and privatization of education, and the responsibilization and managerialization of educational leadership.
