Mayoral Control: Reform, Whiteness, and Critical Race Analysis of Neoliberal Educational Policy

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: What's Race Got to Do With It: How Market-Based School Reform Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality

Abstract

. Objective
The proposed paper is the attempt to articulate a theoretical and praxis-oriented analysis of the realities of mayoral control (MC) through the broader ideology of whiteness and the current project of neoliberal school reform. To understand mayoral control as ideology and policy, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is utilized to gain a further understanding of its function as hegemonic machination of the state.

2. Theoretical Perspective
As a theoretical construct with its beginnings in legal scholarship, CRT utility in education is critical in revealing intersectional oppressions in the form of racist, neoliberal, corporate educational reform. Instead of resting solely on analytical critique of mayoral control, the following contribution concludes with tangible examples of community opposition that has the potential for substantive change in the current landscape of city and educational politics. Written through the lens of Critical Race Praxis (CRP), the idea is to have readers engage the possibilities of interrupting mayoral control through concrete collective strategies.

3. Methods, Techniques, or modes of inquiry
After a brief discussion of the use of CRT as a tool in policy analysis, the paper provides a brief history of the origins of mayoral control in Chicago. The second section uses the analysis of educational theorists from a critical perspective to understand mayoral control as educational policy that reifies the ideology of whiteness/white supremacy. Section three provides an example of the complex arrangements that are facilitated under mayoral control that pairs housing and economic policy. The final section engages Critical Race Praxis (CRP) to highlight current efforts to end mayoral control.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects or materials
Archival data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) documenting the genesis of mayoral control. Current school data on closings via scholarly reports and manuscripts (i.e. Lipman 2011). Current policy language championed by opponents of publicly funded education (e.g. The Republican Party, American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, Manhattan Institute, Broad Foundation, Koch Young Entrepreneurs Program etc.).

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Couched in the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Plan for Transformation and the Renaissance 2010 policies of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), mayoral control centralizes power to solidify public private partnerships, resulting in the further marginalization and isolation of low income/working class African-American and Latino/a residents in Chicago.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study of work
In the multifaceted iterations of the “hydra” (multi-headed monster) of neoliberal school reform, one of the “heads” of the hydra is mayoral control. If the body is neoliberal education reform, mayoral control should be considered one of the dangerous appendages that create the formidable enemy that overtly argues for the end of public education as we know it. As strategy and practice, mayoral control operates on the myriad of assumptions, primarily rooted in the inability of city residents to make tangible decisions regarding quality education.

Author

• David O. Stovall, University of Illinois at Chicago