In comparison to K-12 public schools, colleges and universities in the US have had a relatively independent existence. While corporate interests promulgated by the business community have long driven K-12 school reform efforts, until recently academe had stubbornly held on to its unique role as perhaps the most independent institution in our society. That has all changed. In recent years, higher education institutions have become corporatized through, for example, joint ventures with profit making businesses, the creation of research parks, increased corporate and political control (often through their foundations) over research, use of temporary and contingent labor, and university administrators as paid corporate board members.

In this environment of corporate takeover of schools and universities many recommended interventions are promoted. In K-12 schools some examples are school choice plans (voucher systems, charter schools), comprehensive school designs based on business principles (such as economies of scale, standardization, cost efficiency, production line strategies), back to basics curricula, teacher pay based on test scores, and strong systems of accountability. In universities some examples are the demand for common general education and core curricula (often not developed or supported by faculty), demands for common tests of student core knowledge, standardized tests of knowledge and skill for professional areas, promotion of "classic" education, and elimination of "new" content areas such as women's studies, post-modernism, and multiculturalism. 

This special issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor will examine common interests and struggles that unite education workers in schools, colleges, and university. Questions that might be examined include: 

How can educators build a movement and organizations that unite people in new ways-across union boundaries, across community lines, across the fences of race, and sex/gender? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach-and learn? Whose interests shall schools, colleges, and universities (and our unions) serve in a society that is ever more unequal? How can we build a movement that is both research and action oriented? How can educators support one another in teaching against racism, national chauvinism, and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? What roles do unions play in building a K-16 movement? How are educators and students working together and with others to resist efforts such as: Privatization and commercialization of education / State regulation of knowledge and other threats to academic freedom / Hegemony of accountability and high-stakes tests / Deskilling of teachers and students / School-university partnerships driven by corporate interests / Threats to tenure and increased use of contingent and flex labor / Surveillance and censorship of teaching and curriculum?