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ABSTRACT This paper notes some similarities between school choice policies in England and the US and considers how far any convergences can be explained, on the one hand, by broader social changes and, on the other, by evidence of policy exchange. In the first case, it discusses the usefulness of concepts such as post-Fordism and post-modernity and indicates their limitations. In the second case, it identifies relevant neoliberal policy networks within and between the two countries but finds more evidence of the use of overseas examples to legitimate policies at home than it does of direct policy borrowing. Reflecting upon both sets of explanations, it argues for a clearer conceptualisation of the relationship between accounts of the micro-politics of policy making and macro-level theories of change.
Introduction
Shortly before the 1992 British General Election, the Sunday Times brought John Chubb and Terry Moe [1] over to England to give an outsiders' assessment of the `classroom revolution' being carried through by the Conservative Government. At about the same time, the New York Times sent Susan Chira, its education correspondent, on the same journey to report back on the relevance of the same reforms to the US. The academics' account was a generally enthusiastic endorsement of what had already been achieved and of the prospects for further beneficial changes if a re-elected Conservative Government kept its radical nerve (Sunday Times 9 February 1992). Chira's journalistic evaluation of the reforms was more sober and critical (New York Times 7 and 8 January, 1992). She was also dubious about the exemplary value of what Chubb & Moe (1992) themselves represented to US readers as 'a lesson in school reform'. A later, more substantial evaluation carried out by Stearns (1996) for the Carnegie Foundation identified some aspects of the reforms as worthy of emulation but also sounded significant `warning bells' for its US audience.
Such interest in possible lessons from abroad may be indicative of the similarities between the problems facing both school systems, between the frames of reference within which reform proposals were being shaped and even between the actual solutions being prescribed. In this paper, we consider the apparent convergence in education policy making in England and the US, and how it might be explained. The original...