The Expanding Educational Services Sector: Neoliberalism and the Corporatization of Curriculum at the Local Level in the US

This study analyzes and describes the links between the curriculum policies of one urban school district in the US and an intervention by the economics firm Standard & Poor's (S&P). It characterizes the languages and values introduced to the district leadership by S&P as ideologically neoliberal. This school-level case study that makes clear the connections between the introduction of neoliberal languages and values, local-level curriculum policies, and the resulting experiences of teachers and children in the US. In the end, it offers a case study of the ways corporate forces, such as S&P, are extending their reaches beyond national and state-level policy bodies to local communities to further legitimize the neoliberal project and to "reform" schools in ways that grow their own profitability. (Contains 27 notes.)