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Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students' performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students' achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools' marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students' achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an 'all against all' competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we undertake a particular policy critique and analysis of the gender achievement gap discourse in Ontario and Canada, and situate it within the context of what has been termed the governance turn in educational policy with its focus on policy as numbers and its multi-scalar manifestations. We show how this 'gap talk' is inextricably tied to a neoliberal system of accountability, marketization, comparative performance measures and competition within the context of a globalized education policy field. The focus initially is on how the gender achievement gap has emerged in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OCED) publication of the 2009 Program For International Student Assessment Results, but attention is drawn to questions and categories of equity that are used to define and measure socioeconomic disadvantage. We illustrate that such measures and categories in use function to eschew important aspects of maldistribution, with important consequences for understanding the significance of the interlocking influences of race, social class, gender and geographical location, where there is evidence of spatial concentrations of poverty and histories of cumulative oppression. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the Canadian data to illustrate the multi-scalar dimensions of global/national/provincial 'policyscapes' through a politics of numbers. Contrary to the ways in which Canada and specifically Ontario have been marketed and celebrated by OECD and other stakeholders for their high performing, high quality education system in terms of achieving equitable outcomes for diverse student populations, we illustrate how the 'failing boys' discourse and achieving 'gap talk' have actually functioned to produce a misrecognition of the gender achievement gap, with boys emerging as a disadvantaged category in the articulation of equity policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on ideas of assemblage to examine the contingency and (in)coherence of education policy. The paper is a conceptual and thematic attempt to understand the policy terrain, broadly conceived, pertaining to opposition to the establishment of private Islamic schools in Australia and public Afrocentric schools in Canada. This opposition is located within complex policy terrains relating to multiculturalism, whiteness and race/racism. The paper focuses on the complex racialised politics surrounding education policy initiatives that support marketisation and choice in private and public K-12 schooling – with an interest in what forms of choice are legitimated in and by a racialised education market. The paper concludes that opposition to Islamic and Afrocentric schooling highlights the ambiguity of equity, and the fragility of identity in racialised education policy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rational choice theory suggests that parents are utility maximizers who make decisions from clear value preferences, that they are able to demand effective action from local schools and teachers, and that they can be relied upon to pursue the best interests of their children. This paper presents a different perspective and argues that parents invest a mixture of rationalities when selecting schools. Based on the results of a survey of 1,500 parents of students in 11 private, eight public and 10 alter- native elementary schools in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the logic, values, and concerns that inform parental decision making in the selection of an elementary school for their children and discusses implication for policy and educational reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers in a variety of sites are embracing initiatives that attempt to tighten the links between school and work. A reinvented human capital discourse argues that more highly skilled workers are required to meet the demands of the 'knowledge economy'. This paper explores the new vocationalism as it is promoted within the Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement, a policy report produced in 1996 in Alberta, Canada. Using a critical policy approach, this paper focuses on the process of developing this document with attention to the policy context, influences on the process, ideological assumptions and the impact of the document since its release. Analysis suggests that questions of representation in policy processes, accountability for outcomes and the role of public interests in multi-stakeholder consultation are critical in this era of new public management practices. Further, despite the impression of unity and consensus suggested by policy documents, there are tensions in vocational education and policy that must be addressed if they are also to promote equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]