Some of the reasons for the expansion are a decline in public funding of education around the world , leaving space for private concerns to move in ; the growing number of adult learners ; and the increasing importance of education in knowledge-based economies. And in the United States, the education policies of former president George W. Bush , and now President Obama , have spurred a trend toward privatization of public education . For more than a decade now , market forces have been driving school reform . Are schools any better ? The real question is how much worse have they become . (source The Washington Post)