Choice, Privatization, and Unspoken Strategies of Containment

Abstract

This manuscript argues that two systems of metaphors have set the parameters governing the national debate over educational choice; proponents have relied heavily on laissez-faire metaphors and critics have relied on communitarian metaphors. The former invoke visions of free individuals whose actions are made harmonious via a beneficent market; the latter appeal to the civic role schools have in creating unified communities and a national citizenry. Proponents of choice have argued that markets will make schools more efficient and egalitarian, whereas critics of choice have suggested that privatization may further fragment the body politic. Once choice proposals are considered in the light of institutional racism, it appears that further segregation is a likely result of privatization. Discussions of choice proposals without the systematic consideration of economic and racial inequality threaten to legitimate the most drastic educational inequalities in our society.

Community identity discourse and the heritage academy: colorblind educational policy and white supremacy

“…Charter schools encourage, however, the merging of public and private enterprise, distorting prior notions of public and private goods, services and rights (Wells et al, 2002). Margonis and Parker's (1995) analysis of school choice highlights that the free market is often used as a teleological metaphor that accepts and legitimizes the segregated social and economic networks that currently account for the educational inequalities in US society (p. 397). The re-segregation that results from this colorblind approach to policy makes separation not seem like segregation, but like market choices absent of talk about institutional racism.…”

“…Equitable and equal school integration that included a systemic resource and population redistribution was never fully implemented. White flight to the suburbs and the redrawing of district boundaries subsequently led to persistent residential separation and school re-segregation (Margonis & Parker, 1995). In fact Laosa (2001) finds that US schools are undergoing a new segregation based not only on race/ethnicity but also on language, which results in de facto concentration of poverty and low academic achievement.…”

“…School choice, in particular, is relevant in an analysis of charters. Margonis and Parker (1995) argue that choice proposals are an extension of white segregationist, middle-class strategies that amount to policies of racial containment. Further, they add that school choice pushed by raceless metaphors such as choice effectively legitimize existing race-based inequalities and further privatize education.…”

Public Education Under New Management: A Typology of Educational Privatization Applied to New York City's Restructuring

“…This research has explored how teachers, school leaders, and private sector actors negotiate decision making while making sense of new institutional arrangements, governance mechanisms, and accountability systems, especially under privatized school management (Archer, 2004;Bulkley et al, 2004;Conn, 2002;Miron & Nelson, 2002;Welles, 2000;Whittle, 2005). Margonis and Parker (1995) argued that choice and privatization measures in urban districts represent strategies of "containment;" they are attempts to keep poor children of color enclosed within urban districts and out of more wealthy suburban settings. Urban school district privatization is often state-initiated and based on arguments that school failure is solely the result of local district leadership.…”

In Pursuit of Respectful Teaching and Intellectually-Dynamic Social Fields

“…We see educational expressions of a thing-oriented society when ''national interests,'' economic competitiveness, and the education of ''human capital'' are prioritized, neglecting the legacies of racial and economic segregation which create huge polarities between the preparatory educations offered many privileged students and what Laurence Parker and myself called education for the ''containment'' of inner-city African American and Latina/o students (Margonis and Parker 1995;Margonis 1989). We see the expressions of a thing-oriented society when students, who are denied healthy educational relationships in U.S. schools, are objectified using deficit descriptors-such as, ''culturally deprived'' or ''at risk''-which mark them as undeserving people (Margonis 1992).…”