"Little More Than an Inner-City Jobs Program": Race, Gender, and the Welfarization of Title I

• In Event: Policy, Race, and Reform

Abstract

This paper uses archival data to explore how policy makers discussed the effectiveness of (primarily Black and Brown) teacher aides during attempts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1999. It finds that educational policy debates informing ESEA reauthorization not only reflected broader racialized and gendered arguments undergirding broader attempts to reform social policy and “welfare as we know it.” But by focusing solely on educational outcomes and standards, 1990s policy makers dismissed the original antipoverty goals of Title I. Ultimately the attack on teacher aides served as one final blow to the redistributive goals of 1960s social and educational policy; not only had social policy been increasingly educationalized but that low-wage education work had been increasingly welfarized.

Author

• Mahasan Violet Chaney, Brown University