The Movement Rising From Progressive Resistance to American Legislative Exchange Council–Inspired Legislation: The Case of North Carolina

• In Event: 31.052 - Advocacy Networks and Intermediaries in Educational Policy: Local, National, and Global Perspectives

Abstract

North Carolina's usual education interest groups are increasingly losing influence in the face of privatization-focused policy initiatives that gained momentum, money, and model bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and similar new actors in the policy community. The neoliberal underpinnings of the model bills promote market-driven mechanisms and move toward privatized and deregulated systems as their way to increase productivity, competition, and efficiency. Their education policy proposals encourage entrepreneurs to invest in education and thus profit. North Carolina is significant as an extreme case of a national phenomenon whereby conservative and well-funded national networks like ALEC have become a force by offering benefits and assistance to state legislators who will use their model bills and strategies.

This paper documents the rise of networks that share goals and strategies of resistance. Coalitions comprised of actors whose interest has been pro public education and protecting and supporting those in the traditional public school structures, like school boards and administrators and teachers associations, now find they increasingly share marginal status with the advocacy groups whose "causes" are civil rights, voting rights, pro-labor, pro, health care and social services for the unemployed and poor, pro-peace, pro-environment, women's reproductive rights, pro Hispanic, pro LGBTQ, and more.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODS
Conceptualizing from social movement theory and literatures on politics of education and on education professionalism, data were collected through participant observation, document analysis, and interviews over the course of a year.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
The policy for vouchers, called "Opportunity Scholarships," was the policy that brought together the most commonality of interest and the widest coalition for collaborative strategizing, litigation, and protest. It, along with the policy retracting teacher tenure, are the focus of lawsuits mounted by coalitions. Teachers who are often uninvolved in politics are now creating their own protests, petitions, and blogs, and they are increasingly joining forces with the wide range of progressive advocacy groups who, led by NAACP, are protesting on the legislative lawn weekly.

Analysis, with coding guided by the conceptual framing, reveals six key findings: 1) shared values among progressive advocacy groups and educators created a sense of solidarity, helping to mobilize collective activism; 2) traditional education interest groups capitalized on that momentum, and 3) within a year the neoliberal agendas were successfully challenged to 4) include teacher raises in the budget, 5) answer legal challenges to their policies, and 6) realize their policies had inadvertently catalyzed formation of a new, solidified coalition that was mobilizing with new strategies and were unconstrained by traditional patterns of professional or deferential political behavior. This research also found the emergence of new alliances and new strategies, such as "Moral Mondays" demonstrations on the legislative lawn, and coordination and cooperation in litigation when, as one informant said, “we can no longer be effective with just providing resources and testimony: we're not heard at all.”

Author

• Catherine Marshall, University of North Carolina