In Market Education: The Unknown History, Andrew J. Coulson explores the educational problems facing parents and shows how these problems can best be addressed. He begins with a discussion of what people want from their school systems, tracing their views of the kinds of knowledge, skills, and values education should impart, and their concerns about discipline, drugs, and violence in schools. Using this survey of goals and attitudes as a guide, Coulson sets out to compare the school systems of civilizations both ancient and modern, seeking to determine which systems achieved the aims of parents and the public at large and which did not. Drawing on the historical evidence of how these various systems operated, Coulson concludes that free educational markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public's needs than state-run school systems have.

Discontent with public education has been on the rise in recent years, as parents complain that their children are not being taught the basics, that they are not pushed to excel, and that their classrooms are too chaotic to encourage any real learning. The public has begun to reject school bond levies with regularity, frustrated by what it perceives to be mounting education costs unaccompanied by increased achievement or accountability. Coulson explores the educational problems facing parents and shows how these problems can best be addressed. He begins with a discussion of what people want from their school systems, tracing their views of the kinds of knowledge, skills, and values education should impart, and their concerns over discipline, drugs, and violence in public schools. Using this survey of goals and attitudes as a guide, Coulson sets out to compare the school systems of civilizations both ancient and modern, seeking to determine which systems successfully educated generations past and which did not. His historical study ranges from classical Greece and ancient Rome, through the Islamic world of the Middle Ages, to nineteenth-century England and modern America. Drawing on the historical evidence of how these various systems operated, Coulson concludes that free educational markets have consistently done a better job of serving the public's needs than state-run school systems have. He sets out a blueprint for competitive, free-market educational reform that would make schools more flexible, more innovative, and more responsive to the needs of parents and students. He describes how education for low-income children might be funded under a market system, and how the transition from monopolistic public education to market education might be achieved. Coulson's Market Education touches on a wide range of issues, including declines in academic achievement, minority education, the role of public school teachers, and mismanagement and corruption in educational bureaucracies. Coulson examines alternative reform proposals from vouchers and charter schools to national standards for school curricula. This timely and engaging book will appeal to parents, educators, and others concerned with the quality and cost of schooling, and will serve as an excellent resource in college courses on the economics and history of education.

Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education provides a wide perspective on the dramatic transformation of education policy in Sweden that has taken place during the last 30 years, with a specific focus on marketization. The marketization of education in Sweden is set in the wider international context of changes in education systems. With contributions from researchers across a wide range of scientific disciplines, the book provides examples of the consequences of market orientation in education in terms of increase in inequality as well as in terms of what the market orientation means for principals, teachers and students. It considers how Sweden has developed one of the most marketized education systems in the world and the possible consequences of such processes, as identified by research. Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education will be of great interest to educational practitioners, politicians, scholars in the field, and postgraduate and research students in education.

Continuing education is a booming, competitive market. Outperform the competition with this how-to-do-it-right guide.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Class Strategies and the Education Market examines the ways in which the middle classes maintain and improve their social advantages in and through education. Drawing on an extensive series of interviews with parents and children, this book identifies key moments of decision making in the construction of the educational trajectories of middle class children. Stephen J. Ball organises his analysis around the key concepts of social closure, social capital, values and principles and risk, while bringing a broad range of up-to-date sociological theory to bear upon his subject. From this thorough analysis, valuable and thought-provoking insights emerge into the assiduous care and considerable effort and expenditure which goes into ensuring the educational success of the middle class child The middle classes are a sociological enigma, presenting the social researcher with considerable analytic and theoretical difficulties. Class Strategies and the Education Market provides a set of working tools for class analysis and the examination of class practices. Above all, it offers new ways of thinking about class theory and the relationships between classes in late modern society.

A large central government providing numerous public services has long been a hallmark of Swedish society, which is also well-known for its pursuit of equality. Yet in the 1990s, Sweden moved away from this tradition in education, introducing market-oriented reforms that decentralized authority over public schools and encouraged competition between private and public schools. Many wondered if this approach would improve educational quality, or if it might expand inequality that Sweden has fought so hard to hold down. In The Market Comes to Education in Sweden, economists Anders Björklund, Melissa Clark, Per-Anders Edin, Peter Fredriksson, and Alan Krueger measure the impact of Sweden's bold experiment in governing and help answer the questions that societies across the globe have been debating as they try to improve their children's education. The Market Comes to Education in Sweden injects some much-needed objectivity into the heavily politicized debate about the effectiveness of educational reform. While advocates for reform herald the effectiveness of competition in improving outcomes, others suggest that the reforms will grossly increase educational inequality for young people. The authors find that increased competition did help improve students' math and language skills, but only slightly, and with no effect on the performance of foreign-born students and those with low-educated parents. They also find some signs of increasing school segregation and wider inequality in student performance, but nothing near the doomsday scenarios many feared. In fact, the authors note that the relationship between family background and school performance has hardly budged since before the reforms were enacted. The authors conclude by providing valuable recommendations for school reform, such as strengthening school evaluation criteria, which are essential for parents, students, and governments to make competent decisions regarding education. Whether or not the market-oriented reforms to Sweden's educational system succeed will have far reaching implications for other countries considering the same course of action. The Market Comes to Education in Sweden offers firm empirical answers to the questions raised by school reform and brings crucial facts to the debate over the future of schooling in countries across the world.

This book examines how the Global Education Industry (GEI) has brokered, funded, and implemented new conceptualizations of ‘good’ education. With a focus on new private providers and policy actors in education, the authors of the book analyze the impact of the GEI on educational research, policy and practice. How did philanthropies and foundations manage to make their voices heard in school reform debates, what are the implication of digital technologies and data infrastructures on teaching and learning, and should the fast advance of the GEI be merely seen as a logical consequence of the commercialization of education? Moving beyond single-country case studies, the book focuses on key issues related to the study of the Global Education Industry in an international context, discussing the rationales, processes and impacts of current developments. This comprehensive book will be of interest and value to scholars and researchers of the GEI, as well as policy makers.

This collection of essays debates the application of market principles to and within the context of education. The contributors are all leading figures in their field, presenting their ideas in an accessible style to the lay reader. Throughout, the educational and public policy issues raised by the application of market principles to education are closely examined.

This book offers a comprehensive empirical analysis of educational inequalities and their consequences on individual labour market outcomes for men and women in France and Germany, two countries with different education systems. Using microdata of either country, the analyses mainly rely on econometric methods. After a detailed comparison of the French and the German education systems, the social determinants of school and post-school attainment are analysed. Then, the extent to which education reduces the unemployment risk is examined, distinguishing between risk of entering unemployment, unemployment duration and recurrence of unemployment episodes. Finally, evidence is given on the impact of education on individual earnings prospects.