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Remaking Public Schooling Within the Corporate Economy

Sun, April 30, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Grand Hyatt San Antonio, Floor: Third Floor, Bonham B

Abstract

Objectives or purposes

In this paper, I focus on the radical deconstruction of public schooling within many OECD countries, and the transition of public schooling to private capital, in order to posit the tensions and contradictions of neoliberal economics. There is a consistent slippage between the fundamental retreat of the state and standardized interventions as imposed by the nation-state, and I argue for the necessity to develop innovative methods and theories to critique contemporary policy networks (Ball & Junemann, 2012).

Perspective or Theoretical framework
This paper draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to examine the global reform of public schooling (Hursh, 2015; Lipman, 2013). It endeavours to postulate the significance of the corporate economy, as a departure from the ‘neoliberal’ economy. In order to understand the risks for equitable access and equitable learning opportunities, that public schooling reforms present for students and their families, this paper argues for a clearer conceptualization of the economic principles and underpinnings that drive these reforms. In his book, The End of Public Schools, Hursh (2015) suggests that market fundamentalism, as opposed to neoliberalism, may be more effective in discussing economic reform and rationalism,
Since the notion of liberal has taken on many contradictory meanings, it might be prudent to drop the term all together. Block and Somers (2014) do not use the term neoliberal but offer what is perhaps a more accurate description of those who support such policies, describing them as market fundamentalists for their almost religious faith in markets. (7, emphasis in original)
Certainly, neoliberalism has grown, mutated and adapted to a digitally-oriented, globalized economy since it expanded in the way of policy directives in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s, political leaders from the US, UK and Australia celebrated Third Way politics, which sought to locate the political economy as outside or ‘beyond’ the neoliberal scope, as taking partly from the traditional left, and partly from the traditional right, or ‘social capitalist by nature’ (Savage, 2011, p. 34, emphasis in original). I argue for the importance of recognizing the social, political and economic context when critiquing public schooling reform.

Data sources
The paper draws on a long-term ethnographic and mixed-methods study (2011-2016), around the reform of public schooling and the economics of public schooling in the global context (see, author xxx). This study utilizes interviews, participant observation, policy documents, and statistical data.

Results and scholarly significance
The question of inequality is a global debate and a global crisis. Since the 1990s, income inequality has risen in the majority of OECD countries (OECD, 2015). Levels of segregation and disparity are only further reflected and manifested in global education systems, across lines of income, race and gender. The reconstruction and remaking of public schooling, as driven by complex and contradictory economic theory, poses a significant risk for equitable access to high-quality and low-cost educational providers.

Author