Refusing Detroit's Public School Failure: Educational Advocacy and Critical Care Countering the Politics of Disposability

• In Event: 14.043 - Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: 14.043-19 - Accountability

Abstract

This paper highlights a narrative study of African American women educational advocates in Detroit and the political resistance they enact to combat structural educational failure and disempowering neoliberal dynamics. The advocates have challenged the traditional public educational system as volunteers, family members, community activists, elected officials, and/or professional educators. The author discusses the advocates’ perspectives, experiences, and improvement strategies in light Detroit’s complex, market-based educational landscape. Findings pertain to the advocates’ efforts to respond to educational and communal loss, family engagement barriers, insufficient school choice options, and concerns about privatization. Their narratives comprise counterstories that illustrate theoretical notions of critical care and traditions of Black women’s political resistance used to combat the politics of disposability that hinder many urban locales.

Author

• Camille M. Wilson, University of Michigan