What is Neoliberal Privatization?

According to educational theorist Stephen Ball (2003, 2016), there are two primary veins of privatization at work in schools today. Endogenous privatization which applies market principles to education using choice and competition and exogenous privatization which allows external groups to profit from public education. He points out the consequences of these privatization efforts writing that these “are not merely structural and relational: they are also ethical and discursive. They work, together with other changes, to shift the meaning of education, from a public to a private good, from a service to a commodity” (2016, p. 1049). Ball (2016) reminds us that “privatization is not simply a technical change in the management of the delivery of educational services – it involves changes in the meaning and experience of education, what it means to be a teacher and a learner. It changes who we are and our relation to what we do, entering into all aspects of our everyday practices” (p. 24). This definition helps us make sense of the pervasive ways that issues of privatization have invaded schools and sometimes become difficult to detect or isolate. While privatization movements, initiatives and language have impacted all schools, teachers and students, it is important to understand that not all of the challenges faced in schools can be chalked up to neoliberalism (Link to neoliberalism) and the associated privatization. The web of discursive influences is simply more complicated than can be summarized by one word.

Advocates for privatization in education might argue that markets work more effectively than public bureaucracies, that exporting certain services allows public education to be more efficient or that freedom to choose is foundational to our democracy. Opponents to privatization efforts might argue that these widen disparities, invite corporate interests to public school classrooms, weaken unions, take control from teachers--leading to further de-professionalization--and erode the quality of public schools.

Examples of Endogenous Privatization which apply market principles to education using choice and competition, by adopting private values and practices:

• Charter school movements which rely on language of the market (innovation, competition, choice)

• Discourses of school choice

• Selective admissions public schools requiring competitive application

• Changes to public schools which aim to make their management more businesslike (lean management systems, teacher ranking on test scores, performance pay systems)

Examples of Exogenous Privatization which allows external groups to profit from public education:

• Product Placement in Schools:

  • Food and drink products in vending machines

  • Product placement in curriculum (Neutrogena health curriculum, Boeing engineering curriculum, Coke measurement curriculum)

• Legislative pushes towards school voucher systems

• Outsourcing of previously public services and positions including:

  • Private HR firms functioning as HR for public districts

  • Private contractors working in support roles in schools

  • For profit charter organizations

  • For profit teacher training programs (teaching fellowships, alternative certifications)

• Sales to schools, districts, states, where for-profit groups are turning a profit:

  • Text-book producers in billion-dollar curriculum industry (Scholastic, Harcourt)

  • Professional development programs with high fees

A Case Study in Privatization of Curriculum:

The well-known children’s publishing company Scholastic, Inc. has recently drawn criticism for a variety of issues related to privatization and the profits they make through school-based sales. While the company mission statement promotes the corporation as a literacy promoting entity which works to promote citizenship, multiculturalism, and curiosity (Scholastic Credo Statement), the company is also publicly traded and designed for and motivated by the purpose of generating profit. 

Scholastic sales brochures, as part of a program called “Scholastic Book Clubs”, are sent home in more than 80% of K-8 classrooms in the United States. The sales from these brochures generate points that the teacher can then return towards classroom books or other materials. This allows the teacher to gain increased profit for selling more aggressively to students. It has also been pointed out that approximately a third of the materials marketed in these brochures are not actually books, but instead toys. This model represents a form of Exogenous Privatization as teachers, under the guise of engaging students in reading, are bolstering the profits of a corporate program which made 1.6 billion dollars last year.

In addition to this problematic model of product placement and teacher to student sales, Scholastic, Inc. also partners with other corporations in something it terms “InSchool marketing division’s corporate-sponsored projects.” This privatization of curriculum, designed with explicit corporate interests in mind, results in the wide distribution of curricular tools in public school classroom which have literally been designed to sell products to children. While under large scale pressure, Scholastic has recently backed off some of the most controversial partnerships, including those with the coal industry, other partnerships remain intact. This includes lessons plans sponsored by the American Egg Board, marketing eggs and their associated health benefits to young children. This is another example of Exogenous Privatization, as non-public entities are gaining profit from activities facilitated through the structures of the public school. Special interest groups have taken notice of P-16 education, recognizing its tremendous power to shape our democracy, dominant discourses, and purchasing decisions. Scholastic Inc. and other privatized curriculum producers are providing one avenue for these private interests to enter classrooms.

In addition to direct market influences over content and the role of teacher as sales person, leaving decisions about the content of texts to what will produce the largest profits has erased marginalized people, stories and experiences from the texts being marketed to students and teachers. This is an example of Endogenous Privatization as decisions about which voices are included in classrooms are left to the competition of the market, rather than informed by complete and thoughtful decisions considering all ways of knowing and being. For example, after conducting an empirical review of the Scholastic sales brochures over the course of a year, Chaudhri & Schau (2016) found that all texts related to indigenous people relied on “stereotypical misrepresentations of Native Americans” (p. 19) and that not a single indigenous author or illustrator was included. This represents a place where the market has failed to include marginalized stories and that failure comes at the expense of children working to make sense of the world.

Another problematic example of stories told for the benefit of the market rather than towards more egalitarian purposes of public education is the recent Scholastic publication titled “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” (Ganeshram, 2016). This picture-book outlines the story of several jovial slaves at Mount Vernon, working to bake President Washington a birthday cake. The only struggle of the story is finding all the ingredients as they happily work together to create a fun and light-hearted surprise. This story functions as a majoritarian story (Kaomea, 2009); one that serves as “a whitewashed version of reality that picks and chooses from among the available facts to present an account that justifies…by drawing on American ideals to comfort and sooth”(p. 110). The story functions to make the majority reader feel good about, or at least unconfronted, regarding our country and its history around the enslavement of people of color. Majoritarian stories are easier to read, hear and thus certainly easier to purchase than counternarratives which might implicate us in continued institutional racism unfolding in the very classrooms where this book might be read. Here the privatization of curriculum and the value of a quest for profit, further reifies hegemonic stories, in contrast to the very purpose of education in service to democracy.

This privatization of curriculum matters in a multitude of ways. These include the explicit positioning of teachers as sellers and students as buyers, in the market driven ‘rewards’ available in this model for teachers who sell the hardest, private partnerships for the express purpose of product sales to children and also in the ways that it uses the market to drive the content available in classrooms. The content taught and the discursive circulations within public school classrooms is central to the foundation of our democracy. As the Abraham Lincoln adage reminds us, “the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” Recognizing the power of schools to shape democracy and the orientations of future generations, special interest groups have invited themselves to the table.