Pushing the Boundaries of Education Policy: The Political Economy of Racialized Punishment, Privatization, and Resistance

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The “educationalization of social policy" has been an enduring theme in the politics of U.S. education policy, where public schools have been identified as the favored solution for eliminating poverty, redressing inequality, and solving economic insecurity. This panel considers the possibilities and limitations of this approach. In conversation with critical policy scholars, we engage with questions of political economy, consider the utility of historical analysis, and expand on theories that reframe definitions of political problems and therefore respond with education policy solutions to enduring dilemmas. More specifically, we consider how educationalized policies to redress economic and racial inequality have persisted under neoliberalism alongside the racialized, anti-Black disciplinary logics that shape student experiences and policies.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 1: Governance, Politics, and Intergovernmental Relations

Chair

• Sonya Douglass, Teachers College, Columbia University

Papers

• Coercion and Consent for the U.S. Education Market: Racialized Surveillance and Community Engagement Under Fiscal Crisis - René Espinoza Kissell, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Complicating the Southern "County Advantage": Market-Based Education Policy, Politics, and Modern Metropolitan Stratification - Rachel E. Williams, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Should Teacher Housing Be Lauded or Loathed? Policy and Politics in District-Led Workforce Housing Initiatives - Terrenda Corisa White, University of Colorado - Boulder; Jackquelin Bristol, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Disciplining Our Own? Politicizing the Image of the Strict Black Principals 1970–1985 - Mahasan Violet Chaney, Brown University

Discussants

• Elizabeth Todd-Breland, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Sonya Douglass, Teachers College, Columbia University