Urban education and its contexts have changed in powerful ways. Old paradigms are being eclipsed by global forces of privatization and markets and new articulations of race, class, and urban space. ...These factors and more set the stage for Pauline Lipman's insightful analysis of the relationship between education policy and the neoliberal economic, political, and ideological processes that are reshaping cities in the United States and around the globe. Using Chicago as a case study of the interconnectedness of neoliberal urban policies on housing, economic development, race, and education, Lipman explores larger implications for equity, justice, and "the right to the city". She draws on scholarship in critical geography, urban sociology and anthropology, education policy, and critical analyses of race. Her synthesis of these lenses gives added weight to her critical appraisal and hope for the future, offering a significant contribution to current arguments about urban schooling and how we think about relations between neoliberal education reforms and the transformation of cities. By examining the cultural politics of why and how these relationships resonate with people's lived experience, Lipman pushes the analysis one step further toward a new educational and social paradigm rooted in radical political and economic democracy. The table of contents contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Neoliberal Urbanism and Education Policy; (3) Dismantling Public Schools, Displacing African-Americans and Latinos; (4) Politics of Mixed-Income Schools and Housing: Moralizing the Poor, Building the Neoliberal City; (5) With Cristen Jenkins: Venture Philanthropy--From Government to Governance; (6) Choice and Empowerment--The Cultural Politics of Charter Schools; and (7) Education and the Right to the City--Another World is Possible and Necessary.
For nine days in September, Chicago belonged to the teachers, school paraprofessionals, and clinicians. On Sep 10, 2012, 26,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) went on strike. It was the ...first teachers' strike in Chicago in twenty-five years. In this essay, the authors begin by locating the significance of the strike in relation to the neoliberal assault on public education and the state's attempt to use the economic crisis further to attack the public sector and public-sector unions. Chicago, a birthplace of neoliberal restructuring of public education in the US, is now a center of the push back against it. A critical factor is the transformation of the CTU. The article examines the interrelationship of community education struggles and the emergence of the CTU as a social movement union. The authors conclude with possibilities for a counterhegemonic education movement in Chicago. Adapted from the source document.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In this article, I examine the contested and racially coded cultural politics of creating mixed-income schools in mixed-income communities. Policymakers claim deconcentrating low-income people will ...reduce poverty and improve education. However, based on activist research in Chicago, I argue these policies are grounded in `culture of poverty' theories that pathologize Black1 urban space. They legitimate displacement and gentrification and further the neoliberal urban agenda while negating that urban communities of color and their schools are spaces of community. Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association and the University of California Press
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The author examines the relationship between accountability and militarization of urban US schools and social and economic processes in cities. The focus is the role of education policies in the ...production of inequality and racial oppression in the context of a new geography of centrality and marginality in world cities. This analysis is developed through a case study of Chicago school policy, which has been presented as a model for US schools nationally. The analysis is grounded in critical policy scholarship and critical race theory and draws on qualitative studies of four Chicago schools and system-wide data. It is argued that Chicago's policies serve to regulate and marginalize African American and Latino youth and sort and discipline them for differentiated roles in the economy and the city. It is also argued that these policies establish racialized social control through direct force and internalized discipline. The author contends that in the new urban landscape, education policies rooted in accountability and militarization reinforce patterns of racial domination and help produce new, racist differentiations.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Chicago Public Schools, along with the city of Chicago itself, serve as an exemplary case of neoliberal reorganization, as corporate and governmental ‘leaders’ remake Chicago into a global city ...meeting the needs of capitalism. As such, Chicago provides us with an example of ‘actually existing neoliberalism,’ in which neoliberalism's goals are contradictory and contested. The focus in this article is on Renaissance 2010, a corporate proposal to reform both the city and its schools to create schools and spaces that will attract the professionals needed in a global city. Renaissance 2010 places public schooling under the control of corporate leaders who aim to convert public schools to charter and contract schools, handing over their administration to corporations and breaking the power of unions. However, as the article shows, such reforms not only disenfranchise the poor, people of color, students, parents, and educators, but also create an economically and spatially separate city. Consequently, while neoliberalism is promoted as an efficient and neutral reform, in Chicago neoliberalism faces increasing resistance.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This book examines the ways in which teachers' ideologies or belief systems about African American students interfere with the goals and aims of school restructuring. By following the progress of ...school restructuring in two junior high schools in a southern city fictitiously called Riverton, it explores the intersection of the failure of schools to educate students of color and school restructuring. At one school, upper-middle class white parents wielded most of the power, while at the other, an entrenched view of African American students as inferior had great impact on restructuring. Field work began in Riverton in 1988 and continued through 1991. Observations in both schools, school system and school documents, and interviews with students, teachers, and administrators provided data. The first chapter introduces the study. Chapter 2, "The Education of African Americans and School Restructuring," presents explanations for school performance and educational experiences of students of color, and explores the role of cultural and educational change in transforming schools. In Chapter 3, the historical and social context of the study is set through a description of the city of Riverton. Chapter 4 introduces the case studies with a typology of teacher ideologies regarding African American students. Chapters 5 and 6 describe and analyze how the teachers interpreted the restructuring. Chapter 5 focuses on ninth-grade teams, and Chapter 6 examines restructuring school-wide. In Chapter 7, the activities of one seventh- and one eighth-grade focus team at one school are compared with the other. Chapter 8, discusses the ways school culture, competing ideologies, and the school's and principal's position in district hierarchy influenced restructuring. Chapter 9 describes three exemplary teachers, and the concluding chapter examines assumptions regarding change in relation to the two schools. An appendix describes study methodology. (Contains 2 tables and 213 references.) (SLD)
For 35 years, Anthropology and Education Quarterly has provided analyses of education in social and cultural contexts. In this article, I describe the present context as the conjuncture of global ...neoliberalism, resistance, and U.S. drive for world domination. I propose ethnography that politically engages relationships between education and this social situation, and I support activist research that is aligned with parents, students, and communities in resistance. I draw on my recent work as illustration.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Teacher participation is central to many school restructuring projects. This article challenges assumptions regarding the connection between greater teacher empowerment and school-based reform, ...particularly for students in marginalized groups. The article presents a case study of teacher collaboration and decision making in restructuring a junior high school and the implications for low-achieving African-American students. Using ethnographic methods, the study examines the influence of teachers' ideologies and the social and political contexts in which the school is embedded. My analysis of the data suggests that, if restructuring is to transform the educational experiences of marginalized students, it will require both personal and social change-challenging educators' beliefs and assumptions as well as relations of power in schools and communities.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
