"Bottom-Line" Choices: Effects of Market Ideology in Florida's Voluntary Preschool Policies

• In Event: 75.060 - Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.060-9 - Politics and Access in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to uncover systems of reasoning and taken-for-granted assumptions embedded within Florida’s Voluntary Preschool Education Program (VPK) policies and their implications on matters of social justice. Systems of reasoning based upon market ideology and assumptions of good economic actors, resulting from influences from conservative modernism, are identified and are found to facilitate policies that fail to provide Florida’s four-year-olds opportunity for prekindergarten education (Fla. Const. art. IX, § 1(b)). A document review of Florida’s constitution, statutes, regulations, and other government documents uncovered policies facilitating exclusion through a hierarchy of choice and thus perpetuating discriminatory and unjust practices of (pre)schooling. Implications for children and families historically marginalized and disempowered are discussed.

Authors

• Angela C Passero, University of South Florida

• Roderick Jones, University of South Florida