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This chapter attempts to untangle the complex arena of private sector engagement in education by discussing the definitional challenges associated with understanding the non-state sector and by introducing some conceptual frameworks employed in research on private education. A thematic review of research from the field of Comparative International Education is provided to give the reader an understanding of the diversity that characterizes private involvement as well as the interconnectedness of private actors, specifically drawing attention to findings that grapple with equity implications. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for developing a framework for research via posing questions that ought to be asked when designing, conducting and analyzing findings from studies into private sector engagement in education.

The World Bank's new Education Sector Strategy 2020 (2011) points to an important role for private actors in the development of high-quality, high-equity education systems that effectively address poverty alleviation in low and middle-income countries. This chapter asks whether this emphasis on private participation is new, focusing in particular on Bank policies, research, and operations in K-12 education. It also explores some surprising disjunctures between the World Bank Group's official policies promoting privatization and its operational practices. To do so, the chapter draws on a separate research project for which we completed a review of the Bank's current portfolio of projects in K-12 education and a series of interviews with World Bank staff. We also look at the expansion of Bank activities beyond its traditional arms – the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA) lending facilities – by including a brief a review of the educational activities of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which directly supports the private sector in education.

Increasingly, groups external to educational systems are offering time, expertise and products, creating an intricate web of educational governance where entities outside of formal education contribute to state-funded education systems. While this involvement and its motivations have been considered in the literature, it has been less common to explore these interactions between school systems and outside organizations as they relate to the transition from the knowledge economy to the intelligent economy. Such research is important to understand the numerous inputs to education, which can then inform future decision-making. This study traces scripts around the commodification of knowledge, which connects education to individual employability or the economy and cyborg dialectic, or the mutual relationship between humans and technology. These scripts intersect to contribute to the perpetuation of data creation and usage as part of the educational intelligent economy. The scripts traced here originate from Battelle, a primarily a Ohio-based research and development organization, also focused on classroom teaching and learning, specifically in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Mapping scripts related to the commodification of knowledge and the cyborg dialectic indicates promotion of the intelligent economy broadly and individually for Battelle itself across Ohio and beyond, through investments in educators, students and policy-makers but also Battelle’s potential employees and collaborators. This data-focus creates an educational intelligence not only in students, teachers and policy-makers but also in Battelle itself, legitimating it as an actor in education.

Richard Allington is professor of education at the University of Tennessee. Richard is a past president of the International Reading Association and the Literacy Research Association. He has been principal investigator on a number of research projects funded by the United States Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation, and the National Institutes of Health. He is the author of over 150 articles and several books.

The World Bank's Education Strategy 2020 is the latest in a line of education-related strategies focused on supporting economic development in countries worldwide through systematic and targeted educational reform. Yet, the Bank has many critics and a history of developing educational policies that do as much to create inequality in education as to develop it. This chapter introduces the theme of the volume by focusing on the link between the World Bank's education strategy development and poverty reduction. The key emphasis of this volume is the development of the Bank's Education Strategy 2020 and how it is shaped by empirical evidence, contextualized by national and regional variations in education and the economy, and the legacy of World Bank educational involvement. This introductory chapter concludes by summarizing the ways in which each of the volume's chapters contribute to this theme, and suggests how the debates related to the Bank's education strategies and policies can move forward and contribute to educational improvement, economic development, and poverty reduction worldwide.