It is very easy to come away from this week's articles with a very negative flair. Before exploring these readings in further detail, we need to realize that NOTHING in life is perfect. Nothing is flawless. Everything can always be improved upon. Sometimes, in steps meant to take something forward, we end up sliding backward. This ebb and flow occurs on so many levels and in so many aspects of our lives. We must recall, however, that it is the long term view that truly determines whether we are improving out situation in life or making it worse.
Pauline Lipman discusses the concept of neoliberalism in "Education Policy, Race, and Neoliberal Urbanism." She defines neoliberalism as the withdrawal of government from providing for social welfare, replaced instead by economic and special policies that promote the primacy of the market. The heart of neoliberalism in education, according to Lipman, is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which she claims is paving the way for large-scale privatization of public schools. In an effort to make education equal for all, Lipman proposes that we are instead further distancing the spectrums of the highest achievers from the lowest achievers. While well-performing schools are given greater flexibility in the ways to educate their children, poor-performing schools are given further restrictions, and risk losing funding without promoting government sanctioned programs and demonstrating increased student performance, usually through standardized tests. Looking at segments of poor-performing schools, Lipman highlights that these clamp-downs on school districts are disproportionately occurring in non-white lower socioeconomic classes, indicating that the new business involvement in education is helping to promote our future white leaders of companies, and helping hold-down the lower class diversified population for our future blue-collar workforce.
Apple, in "Whose Markets, Whose Knowledge?", takes this concept a step further. Instead of talking about how schools are influenced by business, Apple talks about the school AS business. Students are the new human capital, and school budgets, how they are proportioned, and how they are expended are the new business. Apple also introduces the concept of neoconservatism, or a return to more traditional values and the "morality" of the past. Through NCLB, and the advent of charter schools, upper-class white parents can make sure their children are educated in the same manner they were, without the influence of lower economic classes or outside cultures. The highlight of Apple's article, in my opinion, is the discussion on the changes in the teaching profession itself, how the profession has moved from one of "licensed autonomy" where teachers, once licensed, were trusted to educate their students, to "regulated autonomy", where every aspect of their interactions are now policed and questioned. We can see the concepts of neoliberalism and neoconservatism working in concert as well. The neoliberals are seeing to it that well-performing school districts continue to receive their funds, with limited interference, while struggling school districts receive less funds and increased scrutiny. The neoconservatists are making sure that increased scrutiny reflects "proper" educational methods. We measure the progress of these students with standardized testing which reinforces the superiority of the upper class and further diminishes the knowledge of the lower class.
Dan Osborn's "Digging Up the Family Tree" solidifies this connection between neoconservatism and neoliberalism, drawing lines between individuals in for-profit corporations creating canned literacy programs and individuals involved in the creation and measurement of NCLB. Both Osborn in his work and Irvine and Larson in "Literacy Packages in Practice" connect the political and economic handshaking going on in education, in particular with literacy, back to the racial divide, pointing our how these canned literacy programs, intent on making literacy education neutral in term of race and economics, are actually polarizing students of different racial and economic backgrounds even further.
After this summary, it is difficult to see how any of this can have a positive light. We have for-profit corporations influencing school policy and education, and politics reinforcing for-profit corporate agendas through the auspices of educational "reform", intent on closing racial and socioeconomic barriers, but actually increasing the distance between the "haves" and "have nots".
These articles, however, were all written before our recent economic crisis. We need to look at what impact that has had on our neoliberal and neoconservative thoughts on education today. We have just seen a near collapse of our nation's financial industry. Huge corporations, in existence for years, and synonymous with American production and innovation, are filing for bankruptcy. The American taxpayer is footing the bill for a lot of the stimulus to bring us further from the brink of collapse, at a time when more and more of taxpayers are losing their jobs. One thing is very evident in the news broadcasts today, and that is the finger of blame, trying to pin down who and what and when caused this to occur. The American people are calling for accountability.
We have seen CEOs crumble. We have seen golden parachutes taken away. We have seen executives forced aside. We have seen governments take controlling interest in large corporations. We have seen a major upset in who is sitting in the seats of Congress and our White House. Changes are happening. No longer is the large monolithic corporation king. It is now seen as the enemy. It is seen as holding America back from prosperity and progress. It is being bailed out by the government and told to make progress. It is seeing stress tests placed on it to determine its stability and ability to be saved.
The model of corporate America that schools are being based on is not working, not only in schools, but in corporate America! We are seeing a paradigm shift in how we view business. The arguments that schools should work like businesses does not hold the same weight it did even just a year ago.
In addition to the economic model that neoliberalistic education is based on, the neoconservatist ideals are most likely to fail in the short term as well. One of the biggest weaknesses of NCLB is also one of its supposed strengths: frequent standardized testing. There is so much data present on our schools already. Overlay that data with student test scores, and we can expose the fact that NCLB is not working. Another factor to take into account is next year, 2010, is a census year. Huge emphasis is already being placed on the proposed diversity counts. Compound recent census data with NCLB data, and we may very see the final word on NCLB, for it will be blatantly obvious that children ARE being left behind, and they happen to fall into very well-defined categories, being economic classes and racial backgrounds.
So yes, this week's articles are very negative and depressing. But there is hope. Maybe NCLB is one of those steps forward that ends up sliding us backward. But if we look at the changes in education since the 13 original colonies, can we say that overall, changes have been made for the better?
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