Refusing the Crisis Policy Makers Create Through Their Neoliberal Conception of School Readiness

• In Event: Confrontation: Expanding National and International Policies

Abstract

In this paper, we challenge the dominant neoliberal narrative that children enter elementary school “at-risk” for success. To do this, we provide a brief analysis of how these risks are put upon children and families through policymakers’ reforms as well as highlight conceptual and practical responses that emerged to speak back to such deficit framings of children. Next, we examine policymakers’ current use of crisis to define early education and to support the need for their reforms. Finally, we examine possibilities for action that include both conceptual shifts in framing the education of children and practical strategies for families to refuse the dominant discourse of risk to demand early education programs and public schools be ready to educate their children.

Authors

• Christopher P. Brown, The University of Texas at Austin

• Da Hei Ku, The University of Texas at Austin

• David Patrick Barry, West Chester University