Neoliberalism & Public School

This seminar critically engages and examines how the racial capitalist configuration of public education operates through corporate models of education. Big questions this course asks and traces throughout the quarter include: what does it mean when public education is turned into a corporate model of management that views students as passive consumers, teachers as interchangeable managers/service providers, and communities as potential investors/sources of profit? How do neoliberal education reform policies such as charter schools and school choice maintain white supremacy and economic injustice in working class & communities of color? The seminar also explores and investigates what abolitionary approaches communities, students, & teachers are taking to reject and reconstruct more just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable forms of education in current pandemic and post pandemic periods. Specific areas of focus taken up in the course: Being able to better evaluate the implications of privatization policies on the K-12 public education system in the U.S. as it relates to racial and economic equity Ability to critically assess the racial and economic implications framing students as consumers and measurable producers--i.e. human capital Evaluating the intersection between economic crises and natural disasters and radical free market approaches to public school reform in the U.S. Mapping connections between corporations, the knowledge industries, venture capital and current educational reform strategies behind NCLB, "Race to the Top", and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)