Kenneth J. Saltman, PhD
Professor
Educational Policy Studies
Contact
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1048 ETMSW
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About
Kenneth J. Saltman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. His scholarship examines educational policy, politics, privatization, technology, democracy, and critical pedagogy. Across more than two decades of work, he has developed critical analyses of how schooling is shaped by broader economic, political, and cultural struggles.
Since the late 1990s, Saltman’s scholarship has been at the forefront of studying the neoliberal restructuring of public education. His early work analyzed the corporatization of schooling, market-based reform, commercialization, militarization, venture philanthropy, and the democratic consequences of corporate school reform. These studies examined how public institutions were reorganized through market logics, managerial control, and private influence.
Over time, his sustained focus on privatization led increasingly to the study of digital educational privatization. Beginning in the mid-2010s, Saltman’s scholarship turned to the role of data-driven platforms, educational software, surveillance systems, smart technologies, and artificial intelligence in reshaping schooling. His recent work argues that many contemporary AI initiatives intensify earlier forms of privatization by transforming learning into data production, expanding corporate control, and narrowing democratic authority over education.
A recurring feature of Saltman’s scholarship is its effort to bridge traditional policy analysis with critical theory and cultural studies drawing on scholarship across the humanities and critical social sciences. His work examines the values, assumptions, and ideologies embedded in educational policy and practice while exploring possibilities for democratic education, critical literacy, and emancipatory social change.
Selected Publications
Saltman, K.J. (2026). AI schools and the new child labor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saltman, K.J. (2025). Smart drugs, attention doping, and screen addicts: The drug attention industrial complex in education. London: Bloomsbury.
Saltman, K.J. (2023). The disaster of resilience: Education, Digital Privatization, and Profiteering. London: Bloomsbury.
Saltman, K.J. (2022). The alienation of fact. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Saltman, K. J. (2018). The swindle of innovative educational finance. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Saltman, K. J. (2018). The politics of education: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2016). Scripted bodies: Corporate power, smart technologies, and the undoing of public education. New York: Routledge.
DeLissavoy, N., Means, A., Saltman, K. J. (2014). Toward a new common school movement. New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2014). The politics of education: a critical introduction. New York: Routledge.
Di Leo, J., Giroux, H., McClennan, S., & Saltman, K. J. (2014). Neoliberalism, education, terrorism. New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2012). The failure of corporate school reform. New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2010). The gift of education: public education and venture philanthropy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Saltman, K. J. (2007). Capitalizing on disaster: taking and breaking public schools. New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2005). The edison schools: Corporate schooling and the assault on public education. New York: Routledge.
Saltman, K. J. (2000). Collateral damage: Corporatizing public schools—a threat to democracy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Saltman, K. J. (2020). AI and the technological turn of public school privatization: In defense of democratic education. London Review of Education 18(2), 196-208
Saltman, K. J. (2020). Salvational Super-Agents and Conspiratorial Secret Agents: Conspiracy, Theory, and Fantasies of Control. Symploke 28 (1-2), 51-63.
Saltman, K. J. (2017). The promise and realities of pay for success/social impact bonds. Education Policy Analysis Archives 25(59) DOI: 10.14507/epaa.25.2640.
Saltman, K. J. (2014). Neoliberalism and corporate school reform: “failure” and “creative destruction.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, 36 (4), 249-259
Saltman, K. J. (2010). Urban school decentralization and the growth of “portfolio districts.” Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Policy. Retrieved from <http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Saltman_PortfolioDistricts.pdf>
Saltman, K. J. (2008). Capitalizing on disaster. JAC, 28, 11-27.
Education
PhD Pennsylvania State University Curriculum & Instruction 1999
MS Pennsylvania State University Curriculum & Instruction 1995
BA McGill University Philosophy 1991