Urban Teachers’ Counterstories of Neoliberal School Reform

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

Abstract

Gaining national recognition as “a strong school reform leader,” New Jersey Governor Christie has championed the neo-liberal school reform agenda and has been celebrated in national discourse for his efforts to “transform low-performing—mainly urban—schools and going after “bad teachers.” Considerable scholarly work has demonstrated the corrosive impact of neo-liberal trends in education (for example: Lipman, 2010; Apple, 2006), but little is understood about how the barrage of simultaneously enacted policy mandates are experienced in the lives of teachers and their students in “low-performing” urban schools.
This paper discusses the ways in which critical ethnography can be used to interrupt dominant policy discourses around school reform and illuminate the harmful impact of current policies on students of color in urban schools. It draws on a year-and-a-half long study that examined teachers’ experiences of reform, such as the implementation of private-company professional development and curriculum and instructional mandates aligned with the Common Core, in two schools in two urban districts in NJ. Data collection entailed regular, in-depth observations in classrooms and teachers’ meetings, a teacher survey, and over 30 interviews with teachers, administrators, and policy-makers.
The study draws on a variety of conceptual frameworks to provide a multi-dimensional lens for analyzing policy enactments and teachers’ complex social positions as agents and resisters of neo-liberal policy. I argue that a critical ethnographic approach allows for the analysis of multiple policy enactments simultaneously as they come in contact with each other and existing material and social realities of schools (Ball, Maguire, & Braun 2012). Specifically, I gained insight into the ways teachers’ identities are shaped by neo-liberal discourses (Ball, 2003) and how teachers simultaneously contest reforms that do harm to their students. For example, I documented the ways teachers cooperated with reform yet also circumvented what I call a potentially paralyzing “mandate gridlock” that occurred when several conflicting mandates were enacted simultaneously by surreptitiously choosing which mandates to ignore and how to modify others to best meet the needs of their students.
In conjunction with critical policy studies, I employed a critical race methodology (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), which helps to illuminate the counter-stories of teachers against the prevailing rhetoric that frames them and their students of color as “lazy” and “bad.” More importantly, the counter-stories of teachers of color can provide cogent critiques of institutional discourses that blame students of color for low-performance and dismiss the culturally responsive (Gay, 2010) resistance work of teachers who, for example, refuse to let scripted curriculum take over the class by defiantly opening up spaces, within the script, for critical and culturally relevant analysis.
In sum, I argue that a critical ethnographic approach to the study of school reform, by examining multiple policy enactments “on the ground” and excavating the counter-stories embedded within those enactments, offers a powerful means for contesting prevailing research paradigms and disrupting dominant policy discourses. Additionally, it can provide a raised ethical standard, along with other critical methodologies, for educational research.

Author

• Kathleen M. Nolan, Princeton University