Two Scholar-Community Activists Tell the Story of the Resistance to Neoliberalist 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

Both of us are scholar-community activists, one Black, one white, who have been working together for the past four years on the resistance to neoliberalism in Indianapolis, and we tell our story using the activist scholar approaches of Sudbury and Okazawa-Rey (2009), Stovall (2016), and Gutierrez and Lipman (2016). Starting in the fall of 2012, one of us was asked by two local Black organizations to investigate the expansion of charter schools across the city. For these two organizations, there was growing concerns about a newly proposed, neoliberal educational plan (see Harvey, 2005; Lipman, 2011) that would transition oversight of Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) from the school board to the Mayor’s office. Specifically, the Neighborhoods of Educational Opportunity Plan or NEO Plan (Wren, 2016) would collapse all charter schools in Indianapolis’ urban core into IPS. The Mayor would then appoint board members and a deputy mayor of education to oversee all publically funded schools in Indianapolis. This NEO Plan was clearly predicated on a free-market, “choice” portfolio model of competition, as has been used to provide a rationale for charter schools generally (Fabricant & Fine, 2013. Former Indianapolis mayor, Greg Ballard, and former deputy mayor of education, Jason Kloth, both publicly argued that the NEO Plan would bring new tax paying individuals (largely young whites) to the urban core, which would generate more tax dollars, thus improving the urban economy and elevating the city’s profile (Elliot, 2013).
Five years later, there have been over 50 charter schools (http://www.charterschooltools.org/charterSchools.cfm?stateID=14), with over 40 under the Mayor’s Office (http://oei.indy.gov/mayor-sponsored-charter-schools/). In addition, the state has passed ALEC–originated legislation (American Legislative Exchange Council, the chief source of state-level charter legislation and well known as highly conservative; https://www.alec.org/) that allows IPS to create “within-district” charters, called “innovation schools, of which IPS now has 20 (https://www.myips.org/Page/43889). Further, two local organizations, well-funded by wealthy conservatives within Indianapolis and across the country, were started to facilitate the privatization of Indianapolis schools, i.e., the Mind Trust and Stand for Children. One of the main actions of these two organizations has been to fund the election of all but one IPS school board member by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars whereas previously an ordinary Indianapolis citizen could run and win on $3-5,000 (e.g., Brown, 2014).

In response, a multi-racial, community-wide organization, the IPS Community Coalition, has emerged to critique, resist, and replace the neoliberal school board (see Facebook page of IPS Community Coalition). This organization started with 10 members two years ago, but now has over 200 and is highly active on social media, testifies at board meetings, holds public education meetings, and organizes protests. Furthermore, one of the authors of this paper is the President of this organization and is now running for the school board in the November, 2018, election. Accordingly, this paper is a presentation of the recent history of neoliberal education activities in Indianapolis and of the emergence of a community-based resistance, told by scholar-community activists involved in this resistance.

Authors

• Nathaniel A. Williams, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• James Joseph "Jim" Scheurich, Indiana University - Indianapolis