Critical Data-Driven Decision Making: Co-Opting a Neoliberal Tool for Equity and Justice Goals

• In Event: Roundtable Session 49
  In Roundtable Session: Neoliberal Education and the Conflict With Social Justice

Abstract

Heightened scrutiny of public schools has intensified pressure to identify and reduce school achievement gaps through the use of data-driven decision-making strategies. Using narrow sets of data as the basis for curricular and pedagogic decisions to raise test scores is a neoliberal logic that can mask structural inequities and ignore opportunity gaps as well as de-skill, surveil, and punish teachers. This conceptual paper explores the potential of critical data driven decision-making (CDDDM) as a framework that co-opts neoliberal rhetoric in order to re-skill and empower teachers with an aim towards addressing deep-seated structural inequities in schools as a strategy for building more equitable and just school environments. Equity audits are identified as a possible application of this framework.

Authors

• Katy Swalwell, Iowa State University

• Stephanie L. Dodman, George Mason University

• Jenice Leilani View, George Mason University

• Stacia M. Stribling, George Mason University

• Elizabeth K. DeMulder, George Mason University

• Sophia Sun Ra, George Mason University