Neoliberalism and the Public Schools

Neoliberalism is a response to dealing with crises in the public sphere such as schools, hospitals, public transportation, prisons, et cetra. The solution to these crises is to increase the role of corporations or private entities. Taking a quick glance at this it may not be such a bad idea for corporations to get involved. Many times these corporations or private entities are donating technology, books, and textbooks. However, by allowing corporations or private entities into our school system is taking the power away from the public. For example, a corporation may support a specific view. The textbooks that this corporation donates will most likely support whatever view they may have. This takes away power from the schools because they are being forced to teach from the textbook and teach the view of that corporation instead of presenting many other views. Another example of this is standardized testing. Corporations are making millions of dollars by supplying study aides to students. While study aides may seems beneficial for our students, our students are studying what these study aides decides is important. These study aides are not being produced by teachers; they are produced by people who have never stepped foot into a classroom.


No Child Left Behind allows for neoliberalism. NCLB mandates that each student passes state mandated tests. This system is set up to fail because those who make the test are not in the classroom. They put questions on a test that they think everyone should know. However, they are not in every classroom, they don’t see the different cultures, and learning techniques. These private businesses want to see the schools fail because they make a profit off of the schools failure. Standardized testing is linked with many review materials. Schools are spending millions of dollars on these materials that are being produced by private companies. Teachers and schools are slowly losing their power because of this. To keep the schools from failing we need to keep the schools private and not allow private organizations into the school system.