Kenneth J. Saltman - Böcker

The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Politics and Policy of Education provides a broad overview of educational policy and politics from critical perspectives engaging with both foundational and cutting edge topics. In critical perspectives, educational policy debates and programs for reform are about more than narrow questions of efficacy say to raise test scores or for simply more educational inclusion, fairer school spending, or even cultural responsiveness. Rather, policy and reform debates represent contested visions for schools and society by social groups vying for hegemony. Critical approaches to educational policy and politics see schooling and education more broadly as contested terrain in which competing visions for education are imbricated with the material and symbolic interests and cultural ideologies of different classes and cultural groups. Chapters in this volume are organized into five sections. The first three sections provide a foundational overview to educational policy and politics, covering culture and politics of education, political economy of education, and subjectivity and education. These chapters address longstanding and current policy and political debates as well as foundational theoretical debates. The last two sections are organized around two themes that address some of the most significant recent directions of educational politics and policy: disaster politics and technology.

The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Politics and Policy of Education provides a broad overview of educational policy and politics from critical perspectives engaging with both foundational and cutting edge topics. In critical perspectives, educational policy debates and programs for reform are about more than narrow questions of efficacy say to raise test scores or for simply more educational inclusion, fairer school spending, or even cultural responsiveness. Rather, policy and reform debates represent contested visions for schools and society by social groups vying for hegemony. Critical approaches to educational policy and politics see schooling and education more broadly as contested terrain in which competing visions for education are imbricated with the material and symbolic interests and cultural ideologies of different classes and cultural groups. Chapters in this volume are organized into five sections. The first three sections provide a foundational overview to educational policy and politics, covering culture and politics of education, political economy of education, and subjectivity and education. These chapters address longstanding and current policy and political debates as well as foundational theoretical debates. The last two sections are organized around two themes that address some of the most significant recent directions of educational politics and policy: disaster politics and technology.

The story of the Edison Schools is a gripping tale of money, kids, and greed. What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in U.S. history lose respect, money, and credibility in such a short time?Revealing how American McEducation went from glory to crisis, TheEdison Schools tracks entrepreneur Christopher Whittle's plan to introduce a standardized nationwide curriculum and cut administrative waste. Education specialist Kenneth J. Saltman finds that the critics' predictions came true in Edison schools across the country: Experienced teachers left in droves, students were virtually given answers to standardized tests to drive up scores, and difficult students were "counselored" out.

The story of the Edison Schools is a gripping tale of money, kids, and greed. What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in U.S. history lose respect, money, and credibility in such a short time?Revealing how American McEducation went from glory to crisis, TheEdison Schools tracks entrepreneur Christopher Whittle's plan to introduce a standardized nationwide curriculum and cut administrative waste. Education specialist Kenneth J. Saltman finds that the critics' predictions came true in Edison schools across the country: Experienced teachers left in droves, students were virtually given answers to standardized tests to drive up scores, and difficult students were "counselored" out.

Schooling and the Politics of Disaster is the first volume to address how disaster is being used for a radical social and economic reengineering of education. From the natural disasters of the Asian tsunami and the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, to the human-made disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, Indonesia, the United States and around the globe, disaster is increasingly shaping policy and politics. This groundbreaking collection explores how education policy is being reshaped by disaster politics. Noted scholars in education and sociology tackle issues as far-ranging as No Child Left Behind, the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina, the making of educational funding crises in the US, and the Iraq War to bring to light a disturbing new phenonmemon in educational policy.

Schooling and the Politics of Disaster is the first volume to address how disaster is being used for a radical social and economic reengineering of education. From the natural disasters of the Asian tsunami and the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, to the human-made disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Sudan, Indonesia, the United States and around the globe, disaster is increasingly shaping policy and politics. This groundbreaking collection explores how education policy is being reshaped by disaster politics. Noted scholars in education and sociology tackle issues as far-ranging as No Child Left Behind, the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina, the making of educational funding crises in the US, and the Iraq War to bring to light a disturbing new phenonmemon in educational policy.

From schools advertising McDonaldOs, Nike, and Shell oil to military generals appointed as superintendents; from corporate CEOs hailed as education experts to students suspended for wearing Pepsi tee shirts on Coke day; Collateral Damage sifts through a wide range of incidents to reveal how the rising corporatization of public schools needs to be understood as a part of a broader attack on the public sector. Uniquely, Collateral Damage considers the privatization of public education in relation to both globalization and local struggles over curriculum, schools, and culture. Saltman describes the dangers to democracy posed by educational policy debates increasingly framed by the language and logic of the market. He reveals how the language of school choice, competition, monopoly, and accountability shifts the grounds of debate to naturalize education along business models rather than for the public good. The commercialization and militarization of public schools, and media images of out of control teachers reveal how political and economic struggles over privatization involve culture, citizenship, nation, identity, and even bodies.

As Junk Bond felon Michael Milken attempts to transform public education on the model of the HMO, he is hailed in the mainstream press as having 'done more to help mankind than Mother Theresa.' Even as BP Amoco, a notorious U.S. polluter, is charged with funding and arming paramilitaries in Colombia, it freely distributes science curricula that portrays itself as a loving protector of citizens from a dangerous and 'out of control' nature. These as well as many other examples abound as Professors Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman take on the corporate educators, media monopolies, and oil companies in their new book Strange Love: How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market. Saltman and Goodman show how corporate-produced curricula, films, and corporate-promoted books often use depictions of family love, childhood innocence, and compassion in order to sell the public on policies that ironically put the profit of multinational corporations over the well-being of people. In doing so Goodman and Saltman reveal the extent to which globalization depends upon education and also show how battles over culture, language, and the control of information are matters of life, death, and democracy.

Kenneth J. Saltman is a defining voice within Education, and for 25 years he has worked to uncover the ways in which public education has been impacted by corporatization and neoliberalism, and to demonstrate what educators and citizens can do to reclaim the democratic purpose of schooling. His work is unique in the way that it bridges a number of traditions, theoretical perspectives, and ranges in scope across the discipline, while at the same time translating crucial concepts in an accessible writing style.In this timely collection, Saltman introduces 11 of his most influential writings across his career with new contextual information for each piece. The volume is framed by a new introduction and conclusion by the author, which re-examine the scope of his work, discuss the larger development of the field over time, and considers what is still to be done.This important work will be crucial to researchers and graduate students in Education courses, particularly within Educational Foundations, Sociology of Education, and Education Policy Studies. The book’s interdisciplinary nature means that it will also be highly beneficial for those studying or researching within Sociology, Communications, and Politics.

Kenneth J. Saltman is a defining voice within Education, and for 25 years he has worked to uncover the ways in which public education has been impacted by corporatization and neoliberalism, and to demonstrate what educators and citizens can do to reclaim the democratic purpose of schooling. His work is unique in the way that it bridges a number of traditions, theoretical perspectives, and ranges in scope across the discipline, while at the same time translating crucial concepts in an accessible writing style.In this timely collection, Saltman introduces 11 of his most influential writings across his career with new contextual information for each piece. The volume is framed by a new introduction and conclusion by the author, which re-examine the scope of his work, discuss the larger development of the field over time, and considers what is still to be done.This important work will be crucial to researchers and graduate students in Education courses, particularly within Educational Foundations, Sociology of Education, and Education Policy Studies. The book’s interdisciplinary nature means that it will also be highly beneficial for those studying or researching within Sociology, Communications, and Politics.

The Politics of Education provides an introduction to both the political dimensions of schooling and the politics of recent educational reform debates.The book offers undergraduates and starting graduate students in education an understanding of numerous dimensions of the contested field of education, addressing questions of political economy, class, cultural politics, race, and gender. Noted scholar Kenneth J. Saltman introduces contemporary educational debates and seriously considers views across the political spectrum from the vantage point of critical education, emphasizing schooling for broader social equality and justice. With three completely new chapters and updates to existing content, additional updates to the third edition include discussions of technology and digital privatization, the dangers of AI, resilience and social emotional learning, authoritarian populism, the expansion of educational censorship and teacher gags, trans politics, new expressions of colonial and imperial education, the rise of misinformation, climate change, and sustainability.With opportunities for readers to engage in deeper discussion through Questions for Further Discussion and a Glossary of key terms, The Politics of Education remains a much-needed, accessible primer for Education Policy and Politics courses, providing the critical tools needed to make sense of the current politics of education.

The Politics of Education provides an introduction to both the political dimensions of schooling and the politics of recent educational reform debates.The book offers undergraduates and starting graduate students in education an understanding of numerous dimensions of the contested field of education, addressing questions of political economy, class, cultural politics, race, and gender. Noted scholar Kenneth J. Saltman introduces contemporary educational debates and seriously considers views across the political spectrum from the vantage point of critical education, emphasizing schooling for broader social equality and justice. With three completely new chapters and updates to existing content, additional updates to the third edition include discussions of technology and digital privatization, the dangers of AI, resilience and social emotional learning, authoritarian populism, the expansion of educational censorship and teacher gags, trans politics, new expressions of colonial and imperial education, the rise of misinformation, climate change, and sustainability.With opportunities for readers to engage in deeper discussion through Questions for Further Discussion and a Glossary of key terms, The Politics of Education remains a much-needed, accessible primer for Education Policy and Politics courses, providing the critical tools needed to make sense of the current politics of education.

The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform examines educational reform from a global perspective. Comprised of approximately 25 original and specially commissioned essays, which together interrogate educational reform from a critical global and transnational perspective, this volume explores a range of topics and themes that fully investigate global convergences in educational reform policies, ideologies, and practices.The Handbook probes the history, ideology, organization, and institutional foundations of global educational reform movements; actors, institutions, and agendas; and local, national, and global education reform trends. It further examines the “new managerialism” in global educational reform, including the standardization of national systems of educational governance, curriculum, teaching, and learning through the rise of new systems of privatization, accountability, audit, big-data, learning analytics, biometrics, and new technology-driven adaptive learning models. Finally, it takes on the subjective and intersubjective experiential dimensions of the new educational reforms and alternative paths for educational reform tied to the ethical imperative to reimagine education for human flourishing, justice, and equality. An authoritative, definitive volume and the first global take on a subject that is grabbing headlines as well as preoccupying policy makers, scholars, and teachers around the worldEdited by distinguished leaders in the fieldFeatures contributions from an illustrious list of experts and scholarsThe Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students of education throughout the world as well as the policy makers who can institute change.

The Politics of Education provides an introduction to both the political dimensions of schooling and the politics of recent educational reform debates. The book offers undergraduates and starting graduate students in education an understanding of numerous dimensions of the contested field of education, addressing questions of political economy, class, cultural politics, race, and gender. Noted scholar Kenneth Saltman introduces contemporary educational debates and seriously considers views across the political spectrum from the vantage point of critical education, emphasizing schooling for broader social equality and justice.Updates to this second edition work through contemporary reform debates that include topics such as the reauthorization of ESEA, race and diversity, standardized testing and common core, and classroom technology. With opportunities for readers to engage in deeper discussion through Questions for Further Discussion and a Glossary of key terms, The Politics of Education remains a much-needed, accessible primer, providing the critical tools needed to make sense of the current politics of education.

The Politics of Education provides an introduction to both the political dimensions of schooling and the politics of recent educational reform debates. The book offers undergraduates and starting graduate students in education an understanding of numerous dimensions of the contested field of education, addressing questions of political economy, class, cultural politics, race, and gender. Noted scholar Kenneth Saltman introduces contemporary educational debates and seriously considers views across the political spectrum from the vantage point of critical education, emphasizing schooling for broader social equality and justice.Updates to this second edition work through contemporary reform debates that include topics such as the reauthorization of ESEA, race and diversity, standardized testing and common core, and classroom technology. With opportunities for readers to engage in deeper discussion through Questions for Further Discussion and a Glossary of key terms, The Politics of Education remains a much-needed, accessible primer, providing the critical tools needed to make sense of the current politics of education.

The past decade has seen a vast expansion of resilience pedagogies, policies, and products in public education, from the Every Student Succeeds Act to social and emotional learning to grit. Educational apps, avatars, and games as well as behaviorist techniques, meditation programs, and biometric devices claim to teach resilience to adverse social conditions while new cyber schools, education brokers, global democracy promotion companies, and dropout recovery firms promise schools resilience to disaster and disruption. The Disaster of Resilience shows how resilience discourse is interwoven with the new digital directions of educational privatization. Saltman argues that resilience has provided the justification for new educational profiteering, creating a climate which individualizes collective responsibilities, depoliticizes and dehistoricizes knowledge and curriculum, and falsely grounds its politics in a mashup of pseudoscience and human capital theory. He argues that we must replace resilience discourse with pedagogies and curriculum that allow students not only to endure the intolerable conditions they find themselves in, but to see beyond those conditions and to act collectively on the social, economic, and racial injustices that created them.

The past decade has seen a vast expansion of resilience pedagogies, policies, and products in public education, from the Every Student Succeeds Act to social and emotional learning to grit. Educational apps, avatars, and games as well as behaviorist techniques, meditation programs, and biometric devices claim to teach resilience to adverse social conditions while new cyber schools, education brokers, global democracy promotion companies, and dropout recovery firms promise schools resilience to disaster and disruption. The Disaster of Resilience shows how resilience discourse is interwoven with the new digital directions of educational privatization. Saltman argues that resilience has provided the justification for new educational profiteering, creating a climate which individualizes collective responsibilities, depoliticizes and dehistoricizes knowledge and curriculum, and falsely grounds its politics in a mashup of pseudoscience and human capital theory. He argues that we must replace resilience discourse with pedagogies and curriculum that allow students not only to endure the intolerable conditions they find themselves in, but to see beyond those conditions and to act collectively on the social, economic, and racial injustices that created them.

With this book, Keneth J. Saltman argues that drugs are at the center of the most significant transformations of schooling. Children are increasingly being drugged to compete on standardized tests, to increase their attention levels in school, and are being diagnosed with ADHD at exponentially increasing rates. Saltman describes the material stakes in what he calls the education drugs attention complex, namely: educational profiteering through the mutually supportive sales of drugs and testing products; drugs and digital screen technologies; drugs and trauma/resilience programs; and drugs and the school to prison pipeline. He shows how each of these examples are part of a vast interlocking drug and attention industry in which pharma and tech companies are commercializing and producing youth problems for profit and are targeting the most vulnerable young people. The book covers the prevalence of screen addiction, the misuse of hormone therapies for transgenders youth, anxiety and trauma medication, the connection between race and drugs, and in the final chapter offers critical, democratic, and practical solutions for educators and policy makers to tackle these issues.

With this book, Keneth J. Saltman argues that drugs are at the center of the most significant transformations of schooling. Children are increasingly being drugged to compete on standardized tests, to increase their attention levels in school, and are being diagnosed with ADHD at exponentially increasing rates. Saltman describes the material stakes in what he calls the education drugs attention complex, namely: educational profiteering through the mutually supportive sales of drugs and testing products; drugs and digital screen technologies; drugs and trauma/resilience programs; and drugs and the school to prison pipeline. He shows how each of these examples are part of a vast interlocking drug and attention industry in which pharma and tech companies are commercializing and producing youth problems for profit and are targeting the most vulnerable young people. The book covers the prevalence of screen addiction, the misuse of hormone therapies for transgenders youth, anxiety and trauma medication, the connection between race and drugs, and in the final chapter offers critical, democratic, and practical solutions for educators and policy makers to tackle these issues.

This book examines the entanglement of capitalism, technological acceleration and AI, and warns that they are eroding education as a means of collective intelligence. Alexander J. Means shows how our desires, dreams, emotions, and psychic life have become the target of optimizing drives and algorithmic manipulation aimed at extracting value from thought and time. He argues that this is leading to a disintegration of meaning, knowledge, and culture, allowing Fascism, fraud, racism, ecocide, and war to thrive in an environment of systemic nihilism and the collapse of memory into computation. He examines how education has become a brand word and how education is being reduced to training in compliance and suggests ways to stop this trend. Means draws on a range of theorists book including Franco Berardi, Alain Badiou, Byung-Hul Chan, Fredric Jameson and Achille Mbembe. The book represents a warning against a life of fundamentalism, money, consumption, and power and argues that education should, in contradiction to the current trends, be equipping young people and adults with the tools to live a life filled with meaning and purpose.

This book examines the entanglement of capitalism, technological acceleration and AI, and warns that they are eroding education as a means of collective intelligence. Alexander J. Means shows how our desires, dreams, emotions, and psychic life have become the target of optimizing drives and algorithmic manipulation aimed at extracting value from thought and time. He argues that this is leading to a disintegration of meaning, knowledge, and culture, allowing Fascism, fraud, racism, ecocide, and war to thrive in an environment of systemic nihilism and the collapse of memory into computation. He examines how education has become a brand word and how education is being reduced to training in compliance and suggests ways to stop this trend. Means draws on a range of theorists book including Franco Berardi, Alain Badiou, Byung-Hul Chan, Fredric Jameson and Achille Mbembe. The book represents a warning against a life of fundamentalism, money, consumption, and power and argues that education should, in contradiction to the current trends, be equipping young people and adults with the tools to live a life filled with meaning and purpose.

How “innovative” finance schemes skim public wealth while hijacking public governanceCharter school expansion. Vouchers. Scholarship tax credit programs. The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance offers a new social theory to explain why these and other privatization policies and programs win support despite being unsupported by empirical evidence. Kenneth J. Saltman details how, under the guise of innovation, cost savings, and corporate social responsibility, new and massive neoliberal educational privatization schemes have been widely adopted in the United States. From a trillion-dollar charter school bubble to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to celebrities branding private schools, Saltman ultimately connects such schemes to the country’s current crisis of truth and offers advice for resistance.Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Breaking new ground in studies of business involvement in schooling, Capitalizing on Disaster dissects the most powerful educational reforms and highlights their relationship to the rise of powerful think tanks and business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement to privatize public schooling through business ventures. At the beginning of the millennium, this privatization project looked moribund as both the Edison Schools and Knowledge Universe foundered. Nonetheless, privatization is back. The new face of educational privatization replaces public schooling with EMOs, vouchers, and charter schools at an alarming rate. In both disaster and nondisaster areas, officials designate schools as failed in order to justify replacement with new, unproven models. Saltman examines how privatization policies such as No Child Left Behind are designed to deregulate schools, favoring business while undermining public oversight. Examining current policies in New Orleans, Chicago, and Iraq, Capitalizing on Disaster shows how the struggle for public schooling is essential to the struggle for a truly democratic society.

Breaking new ground in studies of business involvement in schooling, Capitalizing on Disaster dissects the most powerful educational reforms and highlights their relationship to the rise of powerful think tanks and business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement to privatize public schooling through business ventures. At the beginning of the millennium, this privatization project looked moribund as both the Edison Schools and Knowledge Universe foundered. Nonetheless, privatization is back. The new face of educational privatization replaces public schooling with EMOs, vouchers, and charter schools at an alarming rate. In both disaster and nondisaster areas, officials designate schools as failed in order to justify replacement with new, unproven models. Saltman examines how privatization policies such as No Child Left Behind are designed to deregulate schools, favoring business while undermining public oversight. Examining current policies in New Orleans, Chicago, and Iraq, Capitalizing on Disaster shows how the struggle for public schooling is essential to the struggle for a truly democratic society.

Neoliberalism, Education, Terrorism: Contemporary Dialogues is a collaborative effort among four established public intellectuals who deeply care about the future of education in America and who are concerned about the dangerous effects of neoliberalism on American society and culture. It aims to provide a clear, concise, and thought-provoking account of the problems facing education in America under the dual shadows of neoliberalism and terrorism. Through collaborative and individual essays, the authors provide a provocative account that will be of interest to anyone who concerning with the opportunities and dangers facing the future of education at this critical moment in history.

Neoliberalism, Education, Terrorism: Contemporary Dialogues is a collaborative effort among four established public intellectuals who deeply care about the future of education in America and who are concerned about the dangerous effects of neoliberalism on American society and culture. It aims to provide a clear, concise, and thought-provoking account of the problems facing education in America under the dual shadows of neoliberalism and terrorism. Through collaborative and individual essays, the authors provide a provocative account that will be of interest to anyone who concerning with the opportunities and dangers facing the future of education at this critical moment in history.

Corporate school reforms, especially privatization, union busting, and high-stakes testing have been hailed as the last best hope for public education. Yet, as Kenneth Saltman powerfully argues in this new book, corporate school reforms have decisively failed to deliver on what their proponents have promised for two decades: higher test scores and lower costs. As Saltman illustrates, the failures of corporate school reform are far greater and more destructive than they seem. Left unchecked, corporate school reform fails to challenge and in fact worsens the most pressing problems facing public schooling, including radical funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. But it is not too late for change. Against both corporate school reformers and its liberal critics, this book argues for the expansion of democratic pedagogies and a new common school movement that will lead to broader social renewal.

Corporate school reforms, especially privatization, union busting, and high-stakes testing have been hailed as the last best hope for public education. Yet, as Kenneth Saltman powerfully argues in this new book, corporate school reforms have decisively failed to deliver on what their proponents have promised for two decades: higher test scores and lower costs. As Saltman illustrates, the failures of corporate school reform are far greater and more destructive than they seem. Left unchecked, corporate school reform fails to challenge and in fact worsens the most pressing problems facing public schooling, including radical funding inequalities, racial segregation, and anti-intellectualism. But it is not too late for change. Against both corporate school reformers and its liberal critics, this book argues for the expansion of democratic pedagogies and a new common school movement that will lead to broader social renewal.

Toward a New Common School Movement is a bold and urgent call to action.The authors argue that corporate school reform in the United States represents a failed project subverted by profiteering, corruption, and educational inequalities.Toward a New Common School Movement suggests that educational privatization and austerity are not simply bad policies but represent a broader redistribution of control over social life-that is, the enclosure of the global commons. This condition requires far more than a liberal defense of public schooling. It requires recovering elements of the radical progressive educational tradition while generating a new language of the common suitable to the unique challenges of the global era. Toward a New Common School Movement traces the history of struggles over public schooling in the United States and provides a set of ethical principles for enacting the commons in educational policy, finance, labor, curriculum, and pedagogy. Ultimately, it argues for global educational struggles in common for a just and sustainable future beyond the crises of neoliberalism and predatory capitalism.