Neoliberalism and Inclusive Education

Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace

Sylvia Mac

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800710023
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Charter schools continue to grow in influence, as does the push for inclusive education for students with disabilities. What is the value and impact of these schools, especially on the marginalized populations they often serve? Relying on the fields of DisCrit, and Sociology of Special and Inclusive Education, this book answers these questions by focusing on the topics of neoliberalism and inclusive education.

Mac focuses on the history of the school choice and privatization movement in the United States with special consideration given to how ideologies such as disaster capitalism and neoliberalism shaped and influenced the movement, as well as how successful (or not) these privatization efforts have been overall as a social justice endeavor for marginalized students. The author also recounts the history of education for students with disabilities, highlighting historical inequities of schooling for students with disabilities in the United States.

Drawing from an ethnographic case study of an independent, urban charter school, the school's vision and reality of day-to-day life for students with disabilities at this school are explored. The author investigates the school's inclusion program in the broader neoliberal landscape of free market competition in the educational marketplace and argues that as a result of inclusive education and neoliberal reforms being virtually incompatible, the pervasive neoliberal environment presents the biggest hurdle to successful inclusive education.

1

School Choice, Disaster Capitalism, and the Reproduction of Inequality for Historically Marginalized Students

Although it seems commonplace now for discussions of privatization and school choice to be a part of the education reform debate, the history of privatization of US schools is relatively short and marks “a remarkable cultural change in the perception of school's purpose” (Bartlett, Frederick, Gulbrandsen, & Murillo, 2002, p. 6). This chapter will cover the history of the school choice and privatization movement in the United States, including how ideologies such as disaster capitalism and neoliberalism shaped and influenced the movement. Next, the chapter will focus on a broad history of privatization efforts such as magnet schools, vouchers, and charter schools before moving to a more detailed history of charter schools in particular. Lastly, this chapter will discuss charter schools' history as a social justice endeavor for marginalized students.

The History of Public School Privatization in the United States

Neoliberalism and Disaster Capitalism

According to Adamson (2016) “privatization as an ideology began with Milton Friedman and was first substantively introduced into the U.S. policy system by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s” (p. 6). Since then, the discourse and reform efforts increasingly reflect neoliberal ideology (Bale & Knopp, 2012; Giroux, 2012; Nygreen, 2017; Rowe, 2019). Harvey (2005) defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” (p. 2). Other characteristics of neoliberal reform include deregulation from bureaucracy, competition, and efficiency. With the adoption of this ideology, recent educational reforms have included rationale for the privatization of the public sphere of education and for the inclusion of free market ideology into schools, presented as school choice. As a result, “education is no longer a public good offered and protected by the government; it has become a commodity that can be traded in the market” (Baltodano, 2012, p. 495).

Proponents of neoliberal, market-based school reforms believe that the introduction of free market principles into the public school sphere will lead to better schools (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Walberg & Bast, 2003). Pro-school-choice activists are confident that school choice could be the “tide that raises all boats” (Hoxby, 2003) because they believe that profit-seeking and competition drive innovation and quality for all. They also believe in the free market principle that the allegedly invisible and neutral hand of the market can fulfill consumers' (in this case, students') best interests. They present school choice as a “panacea” (Allen, 1990, p. 5) and argue that “only a consumer-driven system which relies on market principles such as choice and competition…can improve American education” (Allen, 1990, p. 3).

Meanwhile, critics point out that neoliberal market reforms increase inequality because they are intended to do so (Connell, 2013; Saltman, 2014). Competition, by definition, creates winners and losers, making education “a privilege – something that other people cannot get” (Connell, 2013, p. 281), which is antithetical to the democratic promise of public education in the United States. This is especially profound in a society which lauds equal opportunity for all. Nygreen (2017) contends that, “the paradox of neoliberal democracy is that, while symbolically expanding opportunities for democratic participation, it produces antidemocratic effects” (p. 57). Critics also argue that underlying issues of systemic racism and poverty must be addressed and that education inequality is not just a technical problem to be solved but also a social and political problem (Croft, Roberts, & Stenhouse, 2016; Nygreen, 2017). Despite proprivatization advocates' claim to the contrary, “privatization such as chartering and vouchers do not challenge racial segregation and white flight in urban schooling. Instead they exacerbate segregation and naturalize an apartheid system of schooling and real estate markets” (Saltman, 2014, p. 253). In fact, evidence suggest that market reforms are actually harming already marginalized students (Golann, 2015; Waitoller, Nguyen, & Super, 2019) in an “assault on intended beneficiaries” (Croft et al., 2016, p. 71) For example, Sturges (2015) uses the term persistent fringe to “describe low-income, struggling schools that serve as occupied proving grounds for reform prototypes” and argues that these schools “take on the costs and risks associated with implementing new reforms while private developers are able to test those models” (Sturges, 2015, p. 129).

Giroux (2012) lays out other outcomes of neoliberalism:

…privatization; downsizing; outsourcing; union busting; competition as the only mode of motivation; an obsession with measurement; a relentless attack on teacher autonomy; the weakening of tenure; educational goals stripped of public values; teacher quality defined in purely instrumental terms; an emphasis on authoritarian modes of management; and a mindless obsession with notions of pedagogy that celebrate memorization and teaching to the test.

(p. 17)

These outcomes are not benign, but in fact create more inequality. Other outcomes as a result of neoliberal market reforms include a variety of mechanisms, from increased managerialism, surveillance, and control (Hill, 2013), punitive punishment for so-called “failing” teachers and schools (Croft et al., 2016), and the creation of the reform industry (Sturges, 2015) or what some have termed the “testing industrial complex” (Croft et al., 2016). This reform industry produces incredible profits, as Saltman (2014) describes: “for-profit publishing companies, especially the largest such as NCS Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and ETS, publish both textbooks and tests, benefitting from and promoting the expansion of standardized testing and standardization of curriculum” (p. 250). Companies also profit when students do not do well on those standardized tests, creating an incentive to have a continual stream of students deemed to be deficient, or what Apple (2001b) calls “creating profits by creating failures.” As more and more students and schools are classified as failures, more and more curricula and specialized programs are created and sold in the “disability market” (Sothern, 2007). White (2014) writes that, “There is an emphasis on topping up individuals perceived to have a deficit by being seen to give them extra, signified by the following: ‘education boost’ and ‘intensive education’” (p. 248). These programs are not just for students; teachers are encouraged to purchase “education Do-It-Yourself manuals” with titles such as Getting the buggers to behave and Getting the buggers to learn as Slee (2013) writes (p. 896). He argues that such books are “profitable for their authors and publishing houses” and that “the cumulative effect of these books is not educational” (Slee, 2013, p. 896). Tomlinson (1982) argues that “medical, psychological, educational and other personnel” benefitted by “encouraging new areas of professional expertise” (p. 29), such as the Autism Industrial Complex in which “almost anyone can capitalize on and profit from autism” (Broderick & Roscigno, 2021, p. 1).

Neoliberal education reform also includes moving money from the public school system to private hands through the creation of vouchers and charter schools. Harvey (2004) has termed this accumulation by dispossession, in which wealth is accumulated by a few as a result of dispossessing the resources of others. According to Harvey (2005), accumulation by dispossession is characterized by four features. The privatization and commodification of public assets allows for capital accumulation in spaces not previously touched, resulting in “the transfer of assets from the public and popular realms to the private and class-privileged domains” (Harvey, 2005, p. 161). Financialization refers to “deregulation [which] allowed the financial system to become one of the main centres of redistributive activity through speculation, predation, fraud, and thievery” (Harvey, 2005, p. 161). Through the management and manipulation of crises, “the deliberative redistribution of wealth” is possible through crisis creation, management, and manipulation (Harvey, 2005, p. 162). Lastly, state redistributions explain how “the state, once neoliberalized, becomes a prime agent of redistributive policies, reversing the flow from upper to lower classes” (Harvey, 2005, p. 163). In education, neoliberal school reform has meant the privatization and commodification of public schools which, as a public domain, was previously untouched by private hands. This public domain is now being used for capital accumulation. Also evident is the management and manipulation of crises to redistribute wealth, which is discussed further below.

This accumulation by dispossession has taken the form of philanthrocapitalism that seems charitable and benevolent. More than just profiting, philanthrocapitalists are also “able to modify meanings, mobilise assets, generate new policy technologies and exert pressure on, or even decide, the direction of policy in specific contexts” (Ball, 2012, p. 487–488). These philanthrocapitalists “argue that an entrepreneurial approach is the most effective way of solving problems” (Brown, 2012, p. 377) and “see the possibility of a relationship between profit and the solution of entrenched social problems” (Ball, 2012, p. 485). For example, Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities, the investment fund started by tennis star Andre Agassi and financier Bobby Turner, focuses on charter school real estate by “buy[ing] cheap property and leas[ing] it to the charter schools at high interest rates” (Saltman, 2018, para. 9). This takes advantage of the fact that many charter schools struggle to find and afford space for their new school. Although Agassi and Turner have pitched it as a benevolent solution aimed at public education reform, critics call it “poverty pimping” (Saltman, 2014, p. 256). Critics make it clear that it is the public that loses in this model because “the public pays first to build the school building, then gives it away and keeps paying for it to the private real estate investor who now owns it” (Saltman, 2018, para. 10). While lease payments start low, they can soon grow to unsustainable heights for schools. That was the case for Southwest Detroit Community School which shut down due to “eviction” after they were unable to afford the lease payments. The school's lease agreement with the fund outlined a plan in which the school would rent the school building for a time before purchasing it. When they couldn't afford to do so, amid poor academic achievement and high teacher and principal turnover, their rent increased by 57% between 2017 and 2018 (Levin, 2019). Elsewhere, Turner-Agassi have amassed wealth from other cities, such as a deal in Denver “engineered to generate a 9.1 percent return” (Adelman, 2016, para. 9) and the sale of a school in Florida for $60.5 million that was originally purchased for $10.1 million (Larsen, 2020).

Prior to this interest with the privatization of public education, Americans viewed the goals of public education to be to democratic, to create informed citizens, and to create more equitable societies (Bartlett et al., 2002). Rizvi (2013) argues,

…this does not however mean the abandonment of the idea of equity in education. Rather attempts are made to re-articulate the meaning of equity in market terms, so too is equity concerned with student access to educational markets and their preparation to participate in economic markets.

(p. 275)

Equity reimagined in the neoliberal sense concerns itself strictly with markets, productivity, and consumption. It is defined “in terms of outputs, not resources, procedural rights, or racial integration” (McDermott & Nygreen, 2013, p. 88). As a result, the focus shifted to preparing students to be productive workers in the global economy (Rizvi, 2013; Wiseman & Waluyo, 2018) or improving the United States' competitive standing in the world (Turgut, 2013). In the global knowledge economy, the priority is “preparing workers and consumers for the economy” (Saltman, 2014, p. 251). For students who have been labeled disabled or defective in some way, this pressure to be productive in a system not designed for or supportive of diverse bodies results in their sustained lower status, rather than the upward mobility promised by privatization proponents. As Tomlinson (2017) explains, “those who find difficulty in learning to required levels…may go on to low-level vocational courses and low-level jobs, or remain a ‘burden’ on the society” (Tomlinson, 2017, p. 6). These defective populations have long been defined by intersections of race, class, and ability, which I explore in Chapter 2. Embedded in this expectation to be productive workers is the implicit understanding that the inability to do so is a personal failing, justifying and naturalizing structural inequality. The narrative of personal failing belies an understanding of ability as inherent and fixed. This biological determinism blames the individual and hides the ways in which inequality is manufactured and engineered by policy and those in charge of it.

Researchers point to a number of political, economic, and social factors for this shift in how equity is defined, such as the shrinking of the middle class and the loss of manufacturing jobs as they moved overseas (Bartlett et al., 2002). The shift was also accompanied by the creation of crises or disasters in education to bolster and legitimize the need to reform, as well as taking advantage of actual disasters. This has been described as “the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering” (Klein, 2005, para. 10). Education researchers (Johnson, 2013; Saltman, 2007, 2014) have applied this concept to explain the privatization of the public education space.

The neoliberal education reform age began as privatization advocates decried public schools as failing and in need of radical reform. For example, some declared that schools were in a “productivity crisis” and need to be exposed to competition in order to increase productivity (Hoxby, 2003). This certainly didn't originate within education; rather it follows a trend where “around the world, disaster is providing the means for business to accumulate profit…a grotesque pattern is emerging in which business is capitalizing on disaster” (Saltman, 2007, p. 131). Thus, if public education is declared to be a failing disaster, in what Saltman (2007) calls “smash and grab privatization,” the takeover and dismantling of public schools for profit can be justified as necessary. Much like philanthrocapitalism, this dismantling of schools in the wake of disasters receives a bit of a halo because it is seen as a public good. Researchers have called this a “phenomenon of do-good capitalism where altruism, good will, and even social antagonisms are harnessed to the profit motive” (Johnson, 2011, p. xxxii). This profit motive is an illustration of accumulation by dispossession through the management and manipulation of crises as described by Harvey (2005).

Legislation as a Result of Imagined Disasters

Calling the so-called education crisis a “construct,” Takayama (2007) argues that “every crisis story line has common characteristics that legitimize a particular way of making sense of a given social condition” (p. 427). First, the story line rests on the assumption of an ideal and desirable condition before the “crisis,” which is often romanticized. Second, the story line includes villains, heroes, and innocent victims in a simplistic cause and effect scenario. Lastly, it constructs the proposed solution as the solution, which can be fairly easy given the inclusion of villains and heroes in the story line. Because such a story line elicits an emotional, rather than analytical, response, it has been extremely effective in creating consent to drastically restructure public education (Takayama, 2007).

These elements are evident in the story line of the alleged failure and crisis in US public schools beginning four decades ago. In A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Education Reform, the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) commissioned by President Reagan, decried “the rising tide of mediocrity” and warned that “our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world” (p. 9). This narrative largely placed blame on public schools and its teachers (the villains) but did not account for other factors such as years of disinvestment from public schools or persistent racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools (romanticized circumstances prior to the “crisis”). In short, it did not acknowledge that educational inequality is actually an economic, social, and political problem, not simply one of “bad” schools and teachers (McDermott & Nygreen, 2013; Nygreen, 2017).

The report ushered in a “neoliberal renaissance of the 1980s' marketized education” (Bartlett et al., 2002, p. 5) whereby the previously public sphere of education was opened to market forces and privatization (the solution). President Reagan enthusiastically supported this push for marketized education through vouchers and education tax credits. As a matter of fact, he presented three voucher bills to Congress during his presidency, earning national attention to the concept of opening public schools to market forces.

A Nation at Risk created panic and resulted in an enduring narrative that public schools are failing (Baltodano, 2012; Peck, 2012). Researchers argue this is an example of a “manufactured crisis” because the report contradicted evidence (Berliner & Biddle, 1995). In fact, when White, middle class, and wealthy students' tests scores are used to compare against other students in industrialized nations, the scores are “comparable if not better” (Winfield, 2012, p. 143), demonstrating that it is not a matter of the United States falling behind, but “that the United States fails its poor, Black, and Brown children” (Winfield, 2012, p. 143). Additionally, research demonstrates that “countries that have wide income inequalities also have students who overall do not achieve well in basic education” (Tomlinson, 2017, p. 61).

Nevertheless, the story of failure and crisis endured, and it propelled decades of bipartisan support for neoliberal education policies from succeeding Presidents. As a part of President G. H. W. Bush's America 2000 initiative, the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) was created “to fund the developme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Series Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 School Choice, Disaster Capitalism, and the Reproduction of Inequality for Historically Marginalized Students
• 2 The Creation of Deficient Students in Need of a “Special” Education
• 3 Needy Populations and Individual Failures
• 4 The Illusion of Choice and the Myth of Competition in the Education Marketplace
• 5 The Incompatibility of Neoliberalism and Inclusive Education
• 6 Closing Thoughts and Recommendations
• Appendix
• References
• Index