Summary:

"Math wars", attacks on teacher unions, old-fashioned commercialism, standardized assessment, and surveillance: debates over education have always been heated. But these days, the very concept of public education, the students who are served by it and those employed in this sector are in many ways either being neglected or are under sustained attack by political and corporate elites. And as a result, privatization is no longer "creeping"--it is stampeding through entire school jurisdictions. And while the damage is all-encompassing and ultimately we are all made worse off by this onslaught, it is the most vulnerable among us who are being hurt the most.

This Summer 2014 issue of Our Schools / Our Selves encourages readers to connect the dots between the various manifestations of privatization, and how, under the guise of neoliberalism (sometimes referred to "austerity") it is being sold to schools and society; it also includes a section, available for download [2], that examines the privatization of education on an international scale.