The Early History of Neoliberal Education "Reform" in Indianapolis

• In Event: 25.036 - When Education-Focused Neoliberalism Comes to One City, Indianapolis, Local Scholar-Activists Join the Community-Based Resistance

Abstract

The confused role of government in neoliberal education reform is made especially visible through the Indianapolis mayor’s role in the development of charter school networks in Indianapolis. Commensurate with the rhetorical strategies positioning neoliberalism as the backlash to Keynesianism, the mobilized bias in Indianapolis has relied on an abstract, historical feud between liberalism and the Welfare state. Liberalism is considered, in its purest form, as Adam Smith’s metaphorical “invisible hand.” In this metaphor, the “invisible hand” leads each individual to better his own situation, which subsequently betters that of the masses. Conversely, Keynesian theory supports “government involvement in the economy” (Laitsch, 2013, p. 18) as an answer to market assumptions that over-simplify the contexts in which people might enact a purely economic rationalism. Nonetheless, neoliberalism rejects government involvement almost entirely, assuming that the market, itself, is “natural and normal” (George, 1999). Neoliberal economic theory rests on the idea that the government’s only involvement in business is to protect personal liberty- particularly the liberty to create and accrue wealth (Laitsch, 2013, p. 17).

As those who are wealthy are able to effect governmental policy through fundraising and lobby efforts, the “broad reach” (Laitsch, 2013, p. 19) of neoliberal de-regulation efforts have permeated education reform (p. 19), from legal interpretations to the development of statutes that obscure the role of local government in education. Even as neoliberal approaches to public education eschew state-based oversight and intrusion, the government has played a spectacular role in shifting legal interpretations, education policy developments, and funding toward removing barriers to a “choice” education market. Government involvement, then, is necessary to obfuscate the barriers between private and public enterprise, particularly for those in pursuit of wealth

The transparency through which the Indianapolis mayor undertook market reform efforts is most evident through the mayor’s charter school office. When, in 2000, the former mayor of Indianapolis, Bart Peterson, was afforded the opportunity to authorize his own charter schools, the government was all but removed. Rather than removing the government as a market distortion to free market principles in education, the government played a key role in ushering in neoliberal reform efforts into Indianapolis schools. With his aide, David Harris, Mayor Peterson was able to establish the Mind Trust in 2006: an organization dedicated to brokering relationships with free-market education supporters such as Stand for Children, Teach for America, and KIPP Charter Schools (Vander Ark, 2013). Since 2000, government shifts in function have both created and endorsed state and local policies toward market education reform through the aggressive state-funding of the largest voucher program in the country (Strauss, 2017) and an inconsistent and unpredictable state accountability system that favors charter schools through less rigorous standards and increased funding (Strauss, 2017). This paper surfaces the early history of neoliberal reform in Indianapolis, beginning with the establishment of the Indianapolis mayor’s charter school office in an effort to make expressly perceptible the process by which neoliberal reform relies on governmental action to apply private market principles to a public enterprise.

Authors

• Charity Scott, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• Maureen Negrelli Coomer, Indiana University - Indianapolis