Perspectives From Studying Through School Closure Policy: A Critical Anthropology Guiding Neoliberal Inquiry

• In Event: Reclaiming the Methodological Grounds of Neoliberal Education Policy Research

Abstract

School closures are an increasingly common strategy used by school districts (Kowal & Hassel, 2008), yet what little empirical research exists suggests that closings on average do not significantly improve student achievement (de la Torre and Gwynne, 2009). Federal school improvement grants have rewarded and accelerated this trend by providing districts resources and incentives nationwide, 1929 schools were closed in 2010-2011 alone (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). This paper utilizes “studying through” methodology to investigate larger governance shifts that facilitate school closure policy in New York City. In doing so, it directs neo-liberal inquiry to investigate dynamics in multiple spheres of policymaking.
Nearly 40 years ago, Laura Nadar in her article “Up the Anthropologist,” argued that studying the powerful or studying up would illuminate processes of domination that tend to be opaque. Contemporaries in the field of critical anthropology have expanded this framework arguing for the need for studying through to trace “the ways in which power creates webs and relations between actors, institutions and discourses across time and space” (Shore & Wright, 2007, 11). The framework utilized in this study applies the concept of studying through to investigate various interpretations and experiences of the school closing process in New York City.
Data sources include interviews, observations, and school closing public hearing transcripts in years 2009-2012 Participation for interviewees in this study was voluntary and anonymous. Over the course of 18 months, the investigator conducted 40 interviews with central office administrators, superintendents, principals and teachers at schools proposed for closure and parents and community leaders. Additionally, the investigator observed ten school closing public hearings and ten meetings of a citywide parent organizing campaign against school closing proposals.
Studying through allows one to see larger shifts and dynamics within school governance that are facilitating mass school closures. While the New York City Department of Education (NYCDoE) rationalizes changes in its governance structure as serving decentralization, I argue that it can be better understood as “decentralized centralism” (Karlsen, 1999), which serves a function of conflict management and buffers the central office from the needs and input of students and their families. The remapping of the school governance terrain poses significant new challenges not only to families, but also for education organizing.
Studying through also explains how the school closings in New York City are facilitated by shifts in school governance that both obfuscate the recentralization of the central office and the delocalization of the school system, removing accountability from local agents, and leaving families without actual places to go with their questions and concerns about their children’s education. This research will be important to those interested in employing research methods to help interrogate neo-liberalism, as well as those interested in studying the larger phenomenon of mass school closings.

Author

• Liza Pappas, The New York City Independent Budget Office