The Purpose of Public Education - K-12

For example, the establishment of the No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB) enables the assessment of public schools through standardized testing. The creation of policies simply to regulate public education demonstrates the predominance of neoliberalism in education. Evidently, the purpose of education has been heavily influenced by neoliberalism.
             The neoliberal purpose of public education however, endangers the education received by low-income public school students. Neoliberalism promotes formal structures, standardized curriculum and tracking, which have maintained inequality throughout schools. This structure of education specifically place low-income students in a disadvantage. In David Hursh's (Date) article, it mentioned "how testing policies further legitimize program differences by forcing schools with low test scores (those composed primarily of students of color and students living in poverty) to institute more regimented methods of instruction"" (p. 157). .
             This quote means that the testing policies enforced in public schools are making it more difficult for low-income students to achieve higher test scores, because they are forced to learn in a standardized and controlled manner. These students are then penalized by more budget cuts when they don't perform well enough on their tests. However, having more budget cuts essentially means less qualified teachers and programs that would help these students achieve higher scores. Ultimately, low-income public school students receive poor quality education.
             Another way neoliberalism threatens low-income students' education is because they believe that education should be privatized or forced to compete in an open marketplace. Consequentially, schools in low-income communities are taken over and administered by a corporate-dominated board. For example, the Renaissance 2010 Act "'calls for closing 60 public schools and opening 100 small schools, two-thirds of which will be charter or contract school run by private organizations' using non union teachers and school employees " (Hursh, Date, p.