Sector distinctions and the privatization of public education policymaking

Introduction: Sectors and public education

Distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’ are problematic, especially when imposed in some area of social life, such as education, where individual and collective interests are articulated and contested in institutions. We embrace the idea of a private sector, for instance, but may have substantial difficulty defining it (much less agreeing on a common definition) when it comes to organizing particular institutions. After all, such a concept can include autonomous institutions that depend on the state for protective regulation, clientele, or funding, or individual education endeavors that reject any outside interference. A private education sector might encompass non-profit schools that serve a given community without state support and for-profit companies offering online schooling. On the other hand, the idea of a ‘public school’ may seem to be an obvious example of a public sector institution but is in fact complex and contested, changing across time and space. A public school – or a ‘government school’, as some would have it (e.g. Friedman, 1994) – is distinct from, say, the old idea of a ‘common school’ from which it emerged, reflecting the evolution of the concept (Feinberg, 2016). And what is considered a ‘public school’ in one nation may not be in another, as definitions vary by criteria such as funding, access, purpose, and governance.

While there has been a constant – and, one might argue, creative – struggle to sort between public and private interests and institutions in education, a recent wave of reforms indicates a decline in the primacy of public–private distinctions. Proponents of these policies de-emphasize the boundaries established to demarcate different sectors, seeing such barriers as part of the problem because they impose unnecessary impediments to innovation and distract attention and effort from focusing instead on ‘what works’ in education.

Of course, the weakening of distinctions between public and private sectors in education mirrors trends in many other areas of life as well. State-run enterprises around the globe have been transferred to the private sector; social services are provided by a range of ‘public’ and ‘private’ entities, with little to distinguish them; correctional institutions and military campaigns are run by both state and for-profit corporations; and unprecedented amounts of private, personal information are held by both private companies and public agencies (and the private contractors they hire). In view of technological and institutional trends, some see these patterns as a natural evolution or progression toward a more level playing field that can be shaped by competition, not obsolete institutional infrastructures designed to protect entrenched interests (e.g. Friedman, 2005).

Yet, public education may be a particularly significant, even unique endeavor because of its particular democratic purposes and inherent externalities (Labaree, 1997, 2000). This raises questions as to whether there is anything unique or exceptional about educating the public that defies the diminution of public–private distinctions. Are there elements of the ‘public’ aspects of universal education that require it be the exclusive domain of a strong state sector? Is the trend of moving away from state monopoly control of public education an organic phenomenon? Does it represent privatization? Does that even matter, if outcomes are improved, especially for poor children? And what are the implications of these trends for the democratic function of public education and for public control of public policymaking in education?

In this essay, I examine recent trends in education policy, noting how currently popular reforms reflect the declining divide between public and private sectors. But the analysis questions whether this is simply a natural evolution away from state control of public goods. I argue that while the weakening of public and private distinctions is real and substantial, there are reasons for researchers and policymakers to rely on these distinctions in understanding education policy and – at least as importantly – education policymaking. I should note that it is not my purpose here to spend time defining public or private sectors, especially in their different variations, nor to specify criteria we can use to determine when a good is public, private, or privatized – something I have done elsewhere when considering privatization as a movement and not a status (Lubienski, 2006b). Instead, here I make the case that while we are not necessarily witnessing privatization of public education, the same cannot be said for education policymaking. I suggest that we may be seeing a significant shift toward private interests in the making of public policy for public education.

In the following section, I examine claims about the growing irrelevance of public–private sector distinctions in education policy, noting the evolution of thinking on the primacy of sectors and situating current reforms within the broader historical context. The analysis highlights the fact that reform leaders and policymakers are quite accurate in their observations about the declining relevance of sector distinctions. The third section, however, moves from policy trends to policy agendas, noting the agency involved in blurring the boundaries between sectors in education. I then make a case for the continued relevance of distinctions, not so much as principles that should guide policymaking, but as means for analyzing competing interests, agendas, and beneficiaries of policies. To illustrate this, the penultimate section of the essay focuses not on a particular education policy but on education policymaking. I describe the central role that some private philanthropies play in shaping hybridized private–public policy networks in education policymaking and consider this issue both in the United States and on a global scale. The concluding discussion considers some of the implications of privatized public policymaking in public education.

Diminishing distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’ in education

In the United States, questions of the ‘public’ or ‘private’ nature of education endeavors have traditionally been considered around issues such as access, funding, governance, and accountability. Moreover, these questions have often been decided by legislation and litigation, giving shape to discussion and debates regarding the appropriate mix of these sectors in mass education. Since our current conception of ‘public’ and ‘private’ education sectors began to emerge, take shape, and solidify in the nineteenth century, funding and governance have served as primary distinguishing factors as the common school reforms successfully advanced a model that forced schools to accept state control in order to receive public funding (Bailyn, 1960; Kaestle, 1983). Likewise, the sectarian question became quite central to defining a school’s status. For instance, Catholic schools were set up as an alternative to the public systems in many cities, and Catholic leaders were unsuccessful in their efforts to access taxpayer support for their schools. Indeed, Blaine amendments in state constitutions effectively excluded Catholic and other sectarian schools from the public sector. At the same time, even non-sectarian private schools were denied public support because many states required that public funding go only to schools under local democratic control.

This matter was largely treated as a settled question for much of the twentieth century in the United States as public and private sectors in education served different purposes and populations, had distinct funding and regulatory structures, and separate systems. However, in the 1950s, thinkers like Milton Friedman (1955) and Virgil Blum (1958) began arguing for public funding for private schooling. Public education, according to this logic, should mean schools that are serving the public and thus should receive public funds without necessarily being directly administered by public authorities. This idea remained on the periphery of policy discussions as courts appeared to strengthen the boundaries between public and private sectors, for example, by prohibiting teacher-led prayer in public schools. Yet, theorists and scholars on both the right and left sustained the thinking on the idea of loosening the restrictions between sectors (e.g. Coleman, 1966; Coons and Sugarman, 1978; Jencks et al., 1972). For instance, some saw greater effectiveness in Catholic and other private schools, with the implication that disadvantaged students trapped in failing public school districts would benefit from access to the private education sector (e.g. Coleman et al., 1982; Greeley, 1982).

Although efforts were made to breach the ‘wall of separation’ between sectors, and particularly between public funding and private education, those efforts were largely turned back by voters and courts. It was only in the 1990s that reformers saw their first substantial successes in challenging the boundaries between sectors. Progressive reformers advanced legislation authorizing charter schools, which are effectively a public–private hybrid – taxpayer funded but managed independently of state control – that, in a sense, straddles sectors (see, for example, Kolderie, 1990; Nathan, 1996). At about the same time, market-oriented advocates teamed up with community activists in Milwaukee to pass voucher legislation that allowed public school students to attend, at public expense, private schools – non-sectarian schools at first, but subsequently expanded to include church-run schools as well (Witte, 1993). As this model was proliferating to other cities and states, the US Supreme Court decided in its watershed ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) that such arrangements did not violate the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution since the funding supported and followed the ‘private choices’ of parents.

Certainly, in light of this background, debates around education policy and reform can appear stark in their assumed distinctions between public and private sectors, particularly in the United States. ¹ And this tendency toward dichotomization spans the ideological spectrum. Union activists and public education advocates tend to attack models that undercut state control of schooling and often take an idealized view of the public education system (Owens, 2015; Ravitch, 2009, 2013). At the same time, a notable strand of theorists and policy advocates since the 1950s have argued that the ‘public’ characteristics of public education as traditionally conceived are responsible for its failings, and efforts to supplant those characteristics with market-style mechanisms from the private sector can lead to better outcomes, as is seen, say, with Catholic schools (e.g. Chubb and Moe, 1990; Friedman, 1994; Greeley, 1982). Thus, the centrality of public and private sectors for analyzing and organizing education is common across multiple and conflicting perspectives on education policy.

Yet within this often polarized landscape has emerged a recent wave of reformers who frequently eschew public–private distinctions as outdated and unhelpful – even counter-productive. Frequently (but not always) idealistic and with prestigious, private educational pedigrees, these reformers see themselves as post-ideological and adopt a pragmatic approach to solving the problems of American education. For instance, one of the architects of the post–Katrina New Orleans reforms argues that ‘A truly non-ideological approach would allow the best schools in any city – be they district or charter – to expand to serve more children’. ² Typically tying in with a moral argument about the inequities associated with urban public education, they note a lack of concern with whether a school or initiative is ‘public’ or ‘private’ and instead make the appealing argument that policymakers should focus attention and funding on ‘what works’, especially for disadvantaged children. As Michelle Rhee, the former, reform-minded Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools and later the leader of the StudentsFirst advocacy organization argued, ‘‘Part of my job is to make sure that all kids get a great education, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s in charter, parochial or public schools’ (quoted in Dillon, 2009). In this narrative, they are more interested in affecting the life opportunities of individual children and criticize structures that they see as designed primarily to maintain the perhaps obsolete and ineffective public education system (e.g. Whitmire, 2014b).

This articulation of frustration with the intransigence of traditional sector boundaries, and the willingness to focus on ‘what works’ instead of labels, is quite common with reformers, thought-leaders, and policymakers promoting a consumerist approach for parents. The founder of the highly acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone made the case for outcomes over institutions: ‘The monopoly needs to be broken up. I could care less about the structure. I am just as happy to see great schools as traditional public schools and to shut down charter schools if they don’t work’ (Geoffrey Canada quoted in Ripley, 2010). Leading journalists and policy proponents like Richard Whitmire (2014a), Neerav Kingsland (2014), and Andy Smarick (2012) find sector distinctions to be passé and argue instead for public authorities to cede control to private managers who they contend have the flexibility to innovate to improve outcomes. This is then reflected in the consumerist mentality presented to middle-class parents shopping across sectors for schools: ‘the distinction between public and private schools is no longer as straightforward as it once was’ (Boland, n.d.). ‘Whether a school is private, public, or charter, what’s most important is that the school is a good fit for your child and your family’ (McHugh, n.d.).

More established and theoretically inclined individuals espousing this perspective often assert that public education needs to be redefined so that the primary focus moves from public governance, ownership, and control to access, accountability, and funding (e.g. Chubb and Moe, 1990; Hill, 1996, 2001). In a sense, they argue that it is not only a matter of funding ‘what works’, but what should work according to strong and compelling theories on the political economy of education. In this perspective, public education operates behind boundaries that deny the public sector the innovation, entrepreneurialism, and effectiveness associated with the private sector. According to these theorists, arrangements like collective bargaining agreements and funding schemes that give government-run schools a ‘monopoly’ on public funds represent calcified artifacts protected by established but artificial institutional arrangements (e.g. Kolderie, 1990). The obvious alternative, based on this theoretical perspective, involves non-state remedies from the private sector.

School vouchers represent a prime example of this approach. While the United States has for generations respected a strong ‘wall’ between public and private/religious sectors in education, efforts by market advocates to breach this divide through public funding for non-state schools have been launched in numerous states, through voucher plans for special needs and disadvantaged children, and through education savings accounts and tax credits for private education spending. These were affirmed by the US Supreme Court in 2002 under the logic that the individual choices of voucher-users, and not the state itself, were the primary agent for choosing to direct tax dollars to private schools. Charter schools, as public–private hybrids, are also a prominent instance of the diminution of traditional public–private distinctions in education, especially as they can be managed by for- or non-profit organizations (Scott and DiMartino, 2010). But another example involves the public education system itself as market forces play an increasingly prominent role in education. In this regard, we only need to look to the organizational behavior of schools for evidence of the increasing irrelevance of public/private labels. Indeed, sectors and labels are becoming less essential in view of the rise of marketization in the United States and elsewhere as they are supplanted by competitive incentives intended to guide the policies and practices of schools.

This marketization, of course, follows a distinct trend of using policy to ‘incentivize’ individuals and organizations in order to promote efficiencies and effectiveness (Sandel, 2012). The idea is to use external, competitive pressures to encourage individuals and organizations to pursue better outcomes, without necessarily dictating the means by which those outcomes will be achieved (and not necessarily even the specific outcomes). Together, these types of policies – efforts like charter schooling, parent trigger laws, and pay-for-performance schemes for teachers and students – we refer to as ‘incentivism’ (Lubienski et al., 2011).

Evidence on the organizational behavior of schools shaped by incentivist policies suggests that in marketized environments, these competitive incentives can shape the actions of different schools, regardless of their specific type as public, private, or some hybrid therein – thus making such labels irrelevant. Many examples highlight how supposedly open-access ‘public’ schools (including charter and non-charter public schools) adopt exclusionary policies in order to avoid serving higher cost students. For instance, some charter schools have become associated with winnowing out higher cost special education students and using location and other strategies to avoid serving disadvantaged students (Lubienski and Dougherty, 2009; Renzulli and Evans, 2005; Rotberg, 2014). But at the same time, some exclusive suburban public school districts enroll non-resident students who can pay tuition, and the remaining ‘public’ schools in New Orleans are among the most selective (Lubienski et al., 2009; Petrilli and Scull, 2011). Indeed, in a scenario not unfamiliar to higher education, state schools around the world, as well as in the United States, have been tapping into the lucrative international student market, even if this means excluding their own citizens (Krupnick, 2015; Lubienski, 2011).

Perhaps the area of organizational behavior that most exemplifies the isomorphism of different school types in marketized environments is in the rise of marketing itself. Although schools certainly engaged in more implicit forms of promotion for ages, the practice of commercial-style marketing is relatively new to education, having been unnecessary for most public schools and seen as unprofessional or low market for many established private schools, with only marginal, for-profit schools employing the practice. But with the infusion of incentivist thinking into the institutional environment, educators in public and private schools are now marketers. School leaders recognize advantages to investing in promotional activities, as well as the costs associated with forgoing these strategies when competitors unilaterally embrace them (Cucchiara, 2013; Lubienski, 2006a, 2007; Oplatka and Hemsley-Brown, 2004).

But analyses of the actual presentation and content of marketing materials often reveal little that distinguishes different types of schools based on the information they make available to parents, whether in terms of hard information, such as curriculum or academic outcomes, or softer selling points, such as logos and fonts. Although there are some local variations between public, private, and charter schools, by and large there is an overwhelming uniformity to the information that different types of schools make available about themselves to parents (Lee and Lubienski, 2016; Lubienski et al., 2012). Indeed, it very well might be that any distinctions may be more related to a school’s position in the market, rather than to its status as public or private.

Hence, overall, reformers are right in observing that these distinctions between public and private education sectors may be becoming effectively irrelevant. In fact, in a rather colorful analogy, several have described the decline of these distinctions as akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated a state-run economy from a liberalized system (Borowski, 1995; Brodinsky, 1993; Friedman, 1995).

Policy agendas and public–private distinctions

But even as reformers note that barriers between public and private sectors in education are falling as if it were 1989, those claims obscure the fact that this is not simply the result of some sort of organic process (Chitty, 1997). Instead, the deliberate blurring of boundaries between public and private institutions, sectors, and arrangements is a central part of a policy strategy that is very much predicated on assumed distinctions between sectors. In that sense, claims by reformers of the uselessness and detrimental impact of barriers between public and private forms in education, while perhaps valid, represent a policy agenda more than an impartial observation.

This strategy is perhaps most evident in the cases of public funding for vouchers to private schools (as noted previously) and with charter schools, which incentivist proponents have lauded for erasing the boundaries between public and private sectors in education (e.g. Bolick, 1998). For example, one of the architects of Michigan’s charter school policy (there labeled ‘public school academies’, interestingly enough) hails how these schools are ‘being established by faith communities and will blur the distinction between “religious” and “secular” public education’ (DeWeese, 1994: 34). Likewise, in offering advice to Bill Gates on philanthropic giving, Chester Finn (1998), one of the earliest proponents for charters, highlights the private aspects of these schools while still noting their public character:

They are still public schools – open to all, supported with tax dollars, and accountable for their results to whatever public authority issues their charter. The difference is this: if they do not deliver the results they promise, they do not survive. . . Like anybody else in the marketplace, including a behemoth like Microsoft, they must attract and retain customers. (Emphasis in original)

In the United States, policy strategies to bring down barriers between sectors appear in ballot measures for choice schemes, court challenges to prohibitions of public funding of private institutions, campaigns to organize parents in support of choice proposals, publicly or privately funded pilot or demonstration projects (often targeting specific populations), and programs that promote public–private hybrids, ‘compacts’, or partnerships. The intended result is ‘a blurring of the line between the state and private sectors’ (Carper, 2003: 1).

This policy agenda advances from a very coherent and even compelling theoretical perspective premised on the idea of pathologies inherent to the public sector that can be addressed through private sector remedies. Emerging from economic analyses of non-market sectors, public-choice theory has sometimes morphed into ‘market theory’ in education circles (Bracey, 2002; Davies et al., 2006; Smith, 2003; Walberg, 2000). Regardless of the terminology, the basic idea turns traditional notions of ‘market failure’ upside-down, arguing that government failure is endemic and requires policies that roll back the state as much as possible, replacing state entities, endeavors, and initiatives with market-based alternatives. Thus, the logic and rationale for these efforts to blur sector boundaries contend that the institutional structures that shape the public sector are to blame for public sector failings because they shield individuals and organizations from competitive incentives and that eradicating those structures – allowing schools of whatever type to thrive in a marketized environment – will lead to better outcomes. That is, the public sector impedes entrepreneurialism and innovation, preventing us from fully realizing what works in education. As Milton Friedman (1997) bluntly put it, ‘Public Schools: Make Them Private’. With no need to delve further here into the intricacies of this perspective, the essential point for the present purposes is the centrality of sectors in this thinking, both in terms of diagnoses and remedies.

Consequently, this prominent perspective holds that private sector solutions are generally preferable. When such solutions are not feasible due to political, institutional, or other considerations, public policies that adopt principles from the private sector – choice for consumers, ease of entry, autonomy, and competition for providers, and so on – are seen as the second-best alternative. In the case of mass education, this means the ‘public’ character of education can be preserved through policy innovations such as charter schools in terms of taxpayer funding and public access, if not ownership, direct control, and accountability arrangements. But despite the inordinate attention focused on academic outcomes of such policies in education (Lubienski, 2008), perhaps the more monumental and lasting impact is in terms of the institutional effects, where we see a blurring of the boundaries between public and private sectors.

In that regard, arguments about labeling this policy agenda as ‘privatization’ are beside the point. Despite the claims of critics, few of these incentivist policies meet common definitions of privatization (Ravitch, 1996). Moreover, rather than changing the status of schools from public to private, such policies are designed instead to change the institutional environment in which schools operate and compete with each other across declining institutional boundaries as public education is reinvented – a process better understood as marketization (Foskett, 1998; Lubienski, 2005; Sandel, 2012; Whitty and Power, 2000). Instead of moving public schools into the private sector, these policies are often, in a sense, simply moving the private sector into public schools.

The enduring significance of sector distinctions

Although the decline in distinctions between public and private sectors is more a matter of policy agendas than objective observations, there is nevertheless much truth to the claim that the boundaries between these sectors are increasingly indistinct in important respects. Yet, the preceding discussion should also suggest the possibility of some continued importance of understanding ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ in education as distinct spheres, forms, and functions. Indeed, there are reasons – here I describe just three – that these distinctions have continued relevance and usefulness.

First, if politics is the arena in which influence over the affairs of others is asserted and contested, particularly through institutions of governance, then public–private distinctions are an essential element informing the perspectives and motivations of actors and interests in that arena. Certainly, modern conceptions of public and private were preceded by long periods where no such distinctions existed. The monarch could claim to be the state; ³ church and civil government were one and the same; notions of individual rights, where they existed, had traditional origins distinct from classic liberalism. That said, the political realm still served as the site for the intermingling and mediation of individual and collective interests.

As current notions of public and private sectors were taking shape in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, institutions and associated political systems formed to reflect these emerging distinctions in the United States and elsewhere. Now, even as the current wave of reformers seeks to blend those systems, universal education – no matter what specific form it takes – will continue to act as an arena where individual and collective interests intermingle and are contested, especially considering the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on mass education. A more pronounced model of private education, homeschooling, offers an illustrative example of this dynamic, with families withdrawing almost completely from state governance, funding, and accountability, while debates around the movement indicate the existence of an entrenched public politics around the practice relating to issues of individual and collective responsibilities and rights, standards and regulations, and externalities (Reich, 2002).

Second, closely related to the political realm, of course, is the question of education policy, as politics is the place where competing public policy proposals are advanced, discarded, fashioned, and instituted. In the next section, I consider the question of public and private policymaking in education. Here, I note that policies themselves frequently draw from distinct traditions and systems in different sectors, primarily the state and business sectors. Recent federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind, School Improvement Grants, and Race to the Top, for instance, borrow policy devices such as competition, consumer information, and organizational effectiveness from the business sector while enforcing accountability regimes associated with the state sector (albeit adding an element of consumer accountability). Similarly, the parent trigger laws that have been spreading across states implement a rather draconian, localized ideal of democratic control associated with the public sector while restricting that franchise to consumers – ‘consumers’ being a notion drawn from the private sector (Rogers et al., 2015). ⁴ Thus, education policymaking benefits from a menu of incentive structures, remedies, accountability systems, and other aspects of both public and private sectors.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, public–private distinctions provide an essential analytical tool for better understanding the actors, interests, and beneficiaries of education policy and reform. Indeed, because many current policy proposals – necessarily reflecting the political dynamics and ecologies that nurtured them (Weaver-Hightower, 2008) – combine ideas from the business sector with processes from the state sector, analytic lenses that include allowances for public–private distinctions can be useful for discerning the agendas, activities, and outcomes associated with particular policies. This is especially imperative even as reformers assert the uselessness of public–private distinctions since paying attention to these differences allows researchers to determine the interests and agendas involved, what aspects of policies ‘work’ (or not), and why.

Privatization of public policymaking

To illustrate how these factors are essential for a better understanding of the remarkable changes we are witnessing in education policy, I turn here not to a particular education policy but to education policymaking itself. Public policymaking in education has traditionally been structured around state institutions such as school boards, legislative bodies, bureaucracies, and government commissions, often allowing for substantial voice from private interests, but ultimately, or at least theoretically, accountable to the electorate. ⁵ Of course, there have been multiple, prominent examples of private (both for- and non-profit) interests with significant influence on American education policy, including philanthropies like the Carnegie and Annenberg Foundations, textbook publishers, employers, the testing industry, teachers unions (some would argue), and parents. Although reformers and policymakers in the past adopted both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies for policy design and implementation, public structures remained essentially at the center of the education policymaking system.

But the most recent wave of reform reflects a shift in policymaking where the influence of private interests is qualitatively different from what it was in the past. In this regard, the notion of ‘heterarchical governance’ is quite relevant, with state entities situated as simply another set of players in a non-hierarchical ecosystem of political and policy actors – public and private – making policy for the public (Ball and Junemann, 2012). Although a number of organizational types can operate within a heterarchical system – including think tanks, media outfits, advocacy groups, and other intermediaries (DeBray et al., 2014; Scott et al., 2014; Scott and Jabbar, 2014) – the evolving and increasingly central role of philanthropies in education policymaking through seeding and shaping heterarchical structures makes them an excellent example of private policymaking in public education, worthy here of additional attention (Au and Lubienski, 2016; Lubienski et al., 2016).

As noted, established organizations such as the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations have been active in education for generations. Traditionally, the involvement of these types of entities reflected an approach to philanthropy that emphasized a social duty to give back to the broader community from the wealth accumulated by these businessmen. This obligation did not involve close management of the use of the gift nor the imposition of the givers’ management approach on the recipients. Quite often, liberal philanthropies would fund causes, while their more conservative counterparts would nurture institutional infrastructure, such as through seeding think tanks, without forcing them to adopt corporate structures or practices (Rich, 2004). Yet more recent philanthropic activity reflects a move toward ‘effective’ and ‘venture’ models of philanthropy, where grant-making is not treated as a social obligation so much as a social investment toward measureable outcomes (Saltman, 2010). With this approach, philanthropies such as the Gates, Walton, and Broad Foundations expect to maintain control of the steering wheel, both through direction and management of funds around a particular agenda, on one hand, and configuring a favorable policy ecology to advance that agenda, on the other, often by funding think tanks and advocacy organizations to ‘influence the political process and policymaking’ (Reckhow and Snyder, 2014: 187). Particularly when these organizations create and implement their own public policy agenda – the Gates Foundation’s efforts around what came to be the Common Core come to mind (Layton, 2014) – we can see what could be termed privatized public policymaking.

As an illustration of this trend, we only need to return to the previous focus on incentivist policies. The policy coalitions advancing (and, to a lesser degree, opposing) and managing reforms like charter schools, vouchers, and merit pay consist of organizations and interests structured – often orchestrated by philanthropies (Lubienski et al., 2016) – into multi-faceted efforts around a specific issue. Philanthropies are instrumental not only in funding non-state entities like think tanks and research outfits around a particular policy concern. They have also been very active in shaping and influencing the political climate in which those policies take hold and are cultivated. They do this in a number of ways, including support for advocacy outfits, grassroots (or grasstops) organizing, media outlets, nurturing and placing allies in strategic positions in state and non-state organizations, or direct lobbying and campaign funding. The director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) described the notable coherence of these efforts around incentivist policy:

The school-choice community has done this very effectively. In Wisconsin, the Bradley Foundation and the Olin Foundation were instrumental in getting the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program passed – the first real voucher model in the country. They were then instrumental in providing political air cover for the program. They found and supported researchers to document it, and they helped promote it nationally. The Walton Foundation has done the same thing with charter schools. . . (Barr et al., 2008)

Such unprecedented private penetration of public policymaking in public education involves a loose set of leverage points, often enabled by philanthropies, which we can illustrate here with examples from current education policy.

Policy proposals are often introduced or legitimized through research outfits, whether think tanks like AEI, the Manhattan Institute, or state-level organizations, such as those associated with the State Policy Network, or increasingly, university-affiliated entities such as the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard or the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas (Glass, 2014). Policy ideas can be disseminated to legislators through mechanisms such as the American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC), a corporate-funded effort that all but explicitly brings private business interests into state-level policymaking and which produces legislative templates for policies such as charter schools (Underwood and Mead, 2012).

Political influence can also be exerted in a number of ways. Think tanks host events such as conferences and discussions that not only connect policymakers with idea brokers but can also connect them with potential, like-minded donors. Advocacy organizations such as the A+ Colorado or Center for Education Reform (CER) function to gather and direct evidence to the public and policymakers in support of incentivist policy. CER also runs the Media Bullpen, which ‘scores’ journalism effectively on alignment with reform agendas. In fact, much advocacy activity from these organizations, as well as affiliated researchers and media mavens, is focused on disseminating the agenda to a wider audience through traditional media as with op-eds or through new media such as Twitter or blog posts (Goldie et al., 2014; Petrilli, 2014). In addition to support from philanthropies, such efforts can also benefit from public funding, particularly when allies are in elected or other strategic positions.

While education reform–oriented philanthropies often continue to avoid direct political maneuvering, they have become a crucial element in education-oriented elections, often by supporting groups that in turn support particular candidates or initiatives (Au and Lubienski, 2016). Efforts to shape political priorities, like the ‘Ed in ‘08’ effort, or to advance specific measures, such as supporting the ‘Yes on I-1240 Campaign’ to authorize charter schools, are quite evident. Philanthropies often push the ‘revolving door’ between interest groups and bureaucracies by housing the individuals who go on to government positions. And groups like Teach for America’s Leadership for Educational Equity, the Broad Scholars, and the Education Pioneers are explicitly intended to prepare reform-friendly leaders to enter government positions to shape education policymaking.

Notable here is the fact that all of the above-mentioned groups have received funding from the Gates, Walton, or Broad Foundations, indicating an alignment rather than a democratic diversity of interests for these incentivist-oriented networks. While these patterns of heterarchical hybridization of public policymaking in education are quite evident at the national level in the United States, they are also apparent at the local and global levels as well. At the local level, these heterarchical systems are perhaps most evident in the emergence of ‘portfolio’ districts, where elected school boards cede or ‘relinquish’ authority from the district bureaucracy to parents, but also to non- and for-profit management organizations (Kingsland, 2014; Smarick, 2012). This creates a non-hierarchical, local policy ecosystem where different organizational forms of public and private providers, advocacy organizations, and interest groups – often with funding from some of the same philanthropies – can both compete and cooperate in the devolved governance of schools (DeBray et al., 2014).

At the same time, global networks are emerging that reflect these same types of relationships and structures that move toward hybridizing public and private sectors in terms of political power and policymaking (Ball, 2012). Work on policy networks across different contexts is demonstrating the role of think tanks and philanthropies, researchers, policy entrepreneurs, government officials, and elements of the education industry, including publishers, information technology (IT), and testing companies (Ball, 2012; Ball and Junemann, 2012). While public–private distinctions are not always so easy to identify in these dynamics, the growing influence of non-state actors is readily apparent. For instance, the growth in the consultancy industry for education points to both the tendency of governments to look to corporate-style expertise from the private sector while also highlighting the permeable lines between sectors as individuals leave government for consulting work in order to capitalize in part on their government connections (Gunter and Mills, 2016; Verger et al., 2016).

A notable example of this is the role of Michael Barber, formerly with McKinsey but now chief education adviser at Pearson, who brings with him his extensive ties to the policy world from his previous career as a high-level government adviser (Verger et al., 2016). Pearson profits from Barber’s many professional connections across a range of policy networks. Indeed, Pearson, while a private business, aptly demonstrates the ability of private interests to benefit from the increasingly porous boundaries between public and private sectors. As a vertically and horizontally integrated organization, Pearson is positioned to offer a number of services to education policymakers, for instance, by presenting itself as an objective alternative for research services (Hogan et al., 2016; Verger et al., 2016). Pearson contracts with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to offer teacher training that emphasizes accountability for measurable outcomes, and also with governments for testing services for students, or to screen prospective teachers, for example (Cavanagh, 2014; Olmedo, 2016; Sanchez, 2014). The company has also been investing in low-fee schools in developing countries – a sector that supplements or sometimes supplants state schooling in the drive to educate all students (Srivastava, 2016). Pearson, which until recently had a non-profit foundation, has now re-cast itself as a new type of organization that spans sectors: a publicly oriented entity that, although technically a private business, serves a social entrepreneurial function, often by facilitating policymaking with equitable objectives (Santori et al., 2016).

While global organizations such as Pearson operate quite effectively in a hybridized policy environment, it is worth noting the degree to which that environment can be shaped by quasi-government entities such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – a creation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations that in turn shapes policy ecologies in those (and other) countries. Through the publicity it generates, PISA in effect creates its own accountability regime (Labaree, 2014), but with virtually no lines of accountability back to those nations’ citizens. The rankings PISA produces on performance outcomes create implicit and explicit (and often misguided) comparisons on policy inputs, shaping and constraining the public policy agenda in many countries by defining a set of sometimes simplistic policy options policymakers are pressured to embrace in order for their countries to improve in the rankings (Kamens, 2013; Sellar and Lingard, 2014; Waldow et al., 2014).

In view of these patterns evident at the local, national, and global levels, it is quite apparent that it is increasingly inappropriate to speak of ‘public policy’ when it comes to policymaking in public education. While policymaking is still largely directed at the public, albeit now through various hybridized policy networks and forms of schooling, it is increasingly produced and promoted through non-public means. This shift brings to mind Lincoln’s famous observation regarding government and the people. ⁶ Increasingly, it appears that public education, or at least public education policymaking, may be ‘of’, but not necessarily ‘by’ and perhaps not even ‘for’ those it is intended to benefit.

Privatized policymaking and public education

Admonitions or applause for the declining importance of public–private distinctions is based on valid observations of the blurring boundaries between institutional sectors. Yet the declining distinctions are not simply reflecting some organic process, but instead the intended strategy of a policy agenda that highlights differences between sectors while at the same time promoting the superiority of one over the other. This policy agenda clearly benefits private interests that gain control of resources and influence, while the advantages for the public are not as clear and exist still largely in the theoretical realm. Indeed, for a movement that has been so momentous and popular with policymakers, philanthropists, and other influential interests, it has had remarkably little impact in the areas that were anticipated; few would argue that the outcomes evident after over two decades of incentivist reforms are more than modest, at best, or even damaging to disadvantaged students (Braun et al., 2006; Dodenhoff, 2007; Hawes, 2015; Rouse and Barrow, 2009; Stern, 2008). While there are important debates about methodologies and impacts, there really is little room for dispute that the reforms’ greatest impact has been in terms of reconfiguring governance and control of education. Whether or not that ultimately ‘works’ in improving education, ‘we won’t know for probably a decade’, according to Bill Gates (Strauss, 2013).

Of course, Gates is referring to a set of particular education policies – typically incentivist in nature – promoted by his and other philanthropies. While there are debates about whether this agenda represents a form of privatization of education, I have argued here that it does not really privatize, so much as marketize, schools. However, as I have also noted, this trend does represent a pure form of privatization of public education policymaking. However, even as questions around both of these issues – the marketization of schools and the privatization of education policymaking – are still just emerging, private interests and public policymakers are pushing ahead on both incentivist policies and the changing policymaking structures that support them. Yet we do not know how immersing individuals and organizations from the public sector in incentivized environments borrowed from the private sector impacts the ‘public’ in public education – how it changes the ways organizations act to serve different students, how it changes the behaviors and preferences of parents and taxpayers, and how it changes conceptions of ‘public schooling’. At the same time, we may know even less about how the growing influence of individuals and interests outside the public sector affects different forms of democratic participation in political and policy processes, and how their increasing influence of these non-state actors will ultimately re-shape education in the public sector.

Of course, the idea of ‘sectors’ is complex – an abstract concept with a collection of legal and policy factors that help define and demarcate it, but do so in incomplete and fluid ways that can change over time. And an idea like a ‘public’ or ‘private’ sector is likewise convoluted and even problematic. For instance, a private education sector can include religious, community-based, for-profit, cooperative, or other schools, as well as homeschooling; can be funded and regulated by various arrangements; and can look quite different across place or time. Similarly, boundaries between sectors are not set in stone, but can be at times fluid and at others, impermeable. Still, despite their failings, the distinctions between public and private sectors have some uses. We live in an age of deregulation, where the success of such policies is sometimes measured by their alignment with an agenda to blur boundaries between public and private, rather than their effects. Thus, sometimes little attention is paid to the original thinking behind the creation of sectors and regulations. Yet, whether it is schools or policymaking around schools, there is likely some truth to the old adage: ‘Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up’. ⁷