Problems and Possibilities of Neoliberal Education Reforms: Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, and Inequality

Neoliberal education reforms promise (but often don’t succeed) to improve student outcomes and provide more equitable educational opportunities to students with different backgrounds.

They hold schools accountable for their performance through high-stakes testing and linking performance to rewards and sanctions, and by empowering parents. This book presents a critical and objective appraisal of these neoliberalist education reforms. Mustafa Toprak considers the practical elements of neoliberal reforms, including voucher systems, choice, accountability, competition within and between schools, educational inequalities, and high-stakes testing, and in doing this, contributes to social justice debates and the idea of education as a common good. He uses reforms in Chile as a case study and offers a critique of its neoliberal educational reforms. Rather than discrediting all the central tenets of neoliberal education, Toprak considers the pros and cons of these reforms for students, teachers, schools, and societies and proposes new reforms to ensure that policies accurately and responsively address the needs of all stakeholders.

Mustafa Toprak is an Associate Professor at Sharjah Education Academy in the United Arab Emirates. He is the Regional Editor for Egypt for the Bloomsbury Education and Childhood digital resource.