Sun 4/10 245p #WhatsRace #AERA16 Symposium
The Hydra of Educational Reform: Racial Capitalism and Market-Based School Reforms
Sun, April 10, 2:45 to 4:15pm,
Marriott Marquis, Washginton DC
Level Four, Independence Salon F
Abstract
Over the last twenty years, critical education scholarship has turned to the concept of “neoliberal education” reform to describe how market-based reforms and policies reproduce social inequality. At the same time, other scholars center their work on the effects of structural racism in U.S. schools and society. These two essential forms of analysis have often been positioned parallel to each other, resulting in false and counterproductive divisions. This symposium braids these analyses and asks what role race plays within and across the multiple projects, or what we call the “many heads of the “neoliberal education reform hydra.” By articulating a racial-economic framework for analyzing education policy, this symposium seeks to contribute to the struggle to slay the hydra.
Alt Symposium Structure:
We will be organizing this symposium into break out group discussions. After introductions, the editors will give a brief overview of the frame of analysis and the contents of the book. Then chapter authors will briefly share what their chapter is about. Participants will then move into small groups with a chapter author to discuss the relevant topic for 15 minutes, and then move to another topic for another 15 minutes. Michelle Fine will then close the session by facilitating an all group discussion.
Symposium Chair: Edward Curammeng, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: Michelle Fine, City University of New York-Graduate Center
Chapter authors/editors scheduled to participate:
Slaying the Hydra: Understanding and Critiquing Neoliberal Education Reform in this Era of Racial Capitalism
Bree Picower, Montclair State University
Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College
Title: School Choice: The Freedom to Choose, The Right to Exclude
Ujju Aggarwal,City University of New York-Graduate Center
High-Stakes Testing: A Tool for White Supremacy for Over 100 Years
Wayne Au, University of Washington-Bothell
Philanthrocapitalism: Race, Political Spectacle, and the Marketplace of Beneficence in a New York City School
Amy Brown, University of Pennsylvania
Union Busting: Black Teachers, Privatization, and the Future of Teacher Unions
Brian Jones, City University of New York-Graduate Center
Urban School Closings: White Supremacy, State Abandonment, and Accumulation by Dispossession
Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago