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In 2003, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan initiated two major education reform projects: the Education Reform for Knowledge Economy (ERfKE) and the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI). With specific attention to JEI, this article argues that the ‘policyscape’ of Jordan, especially the major involvement of the U.S. in the reform project, is crucial to understanding the challenges associated with the project’s implementation. Within this policyscape, Jordanian reformers claim ownership of the project while advocating for reforms within a ‘global’ discourse shaped largely by neoliberal orientations incongruent with existing practices in Jordan’s schools. It is argued that JEI is fundamentally an economic development project that uses the country’s education sector as a site of investment for the country’s emerging Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.