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U.S. Education Reform and the Maintenance of White Supremacy through Structural Violence

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dc.contributor.authorKeisch, Deborah M
dc.contributor.authorScott, Tim
dc.contributor.departmentUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.date2023-09-23T10:04:54.000
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-26T18:06:04Z
dc.date.available2014-09-05T00:00:00Z
dc.description.abstractU.S public schools are more segregated today than they have been since before the desegregation efforts that followed the 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, (Kozol, 2005, Mullins, 2013; Rothstein, 2013; Strauss, 2014; UCLA, 2014). Coinciding with this segregation are vast racial inequities and stratification, which are being intensified through the policies known as corporate education reform. In this article, we share the voices and stories of scholars and education activists who have documented the racism and segregation of U.S. public schooling over the rise of corporate education reform. We start with the current state of our segregated schools, what Jonathan Kozol refers to as “apartheid education” (Kozol, 2005). We then take a step back and look at the historical and ideological context of U.S. schooling under industrial capitalism, white supremacy and neoliberalism, all creating the perfect storm for the punitive and dehumanizing conditions within 21st century public education. We will then explore the formula of corporate education reform through an examination of specific instruments used to enact these policies: school choice and charters, high-stakes testing, and the disciplining and criminalizing of black and brown bodies. We also examine the delivery of these policies via the discourse used to justify them and the intentions behind them. Finally, we call the question of whether public schools are our best hope for achieving social and economic equity and how those working in this struggle might keep that vision in mind.
dc.description.sponsorshipThis article was co-authored by Deborah Keisch and Tim Scott. Deborah Keisch is a cultural anthropologist who has worked in the field of education for over two decades as a practitioner, researcher and activist. She was a founding producer of Education Radio, a documentary-style radio program that shared the stories of students, teachers, scholars and activists experiencing the impacts of corporate education reform policy. She is also a founder and organizer with the Public Schools Action Coalition, a group of parents and teachers fighting for equity in their local public schools. Deborah has a Masters in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from UMass Amherst. Tim Scott is a psychotherapist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He worked for a number of years in NYC, first as a school counselor in a public junior high school, then as a youth harm reduction clinician with the Special Health Outreach to Urban Teens program. Tim also worked as a union organizer for seven years and was a community organizer for more than a decade. He was a founding producer of Education Radio, a documentary-style radio program that shared the stories of students, teachers, scholars and activists experiencing the impacts of corporate education reform policy. Originally from Ogden Utah, Tim holds an MSW degree and his doctoral work is in social justice education.
dc.description.sponsorshipOur heartfelt thanks goes to the activists and scholars engaged in the struggle for a just and equitable public education system.
dc.formatembedly
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/32633
dc.relation.urihttps://soundcloud.com/landscapes-of-violence/sets/keisch-scott
dc.relation.urlhttps://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=lov&unstamped=1
dc.source.statuspublished
dc.subjectCorporate education reform
dc.subjectracism in education
dc.subjectwhite supremacy
dc.subjectneoliberalism
dc.subjectU.S. public education
dc.titleU.S. Education Reform and the Maintenance of White Supremacy through Structural Violence
dc.title.alternativeU.S. Education Reform and the Maintenance of White Supremacy through Structural Violence
dc.typearticle
dc.typearticle
digcom.contributor.authorisAuthorOfPublication|email:dkeisch@umass.edu|Keisch, Deborah M
digcom.contributor.authorisAuthorOfPublication|email:timscottma@gmail.com|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst|Scott, Tim
digcom.date.embargo2014-09-05T00:00:00-07:00
digcom.identifierlov/vol3/iss3/6
digcom.identifier.contextkey6081158
digcom.identifier.submissionpathlov/vol3/iss3/6
dspace.entity.typePublication
relation.isJournalIssueOfPublication63a807a4-3e30-47cf-ad46-c144e1be55b1
relation.isJournalIssueOfPublication.latestForDiscovery63a807a4-3e30-47cf-ad46-c144e1be55b1
relation.isJournalOfPublicationc7fcbf8c-e1b1-4489-9fcf-53ad5124e0a5
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