Refusing Detroit’s public school failure: African American women’s educational advocacy and critical care versus the politics of disposability

Abstract

This article highlights a narrative study of African American women educational advocates in Detroit and the political resistance they enact to combat the inequities of structural educational failure and disempowering neoliberal dynamics. The Detroit advocates have challenged the traditional public educational system as volunteers, family members, community activists, elected officials, and/or professional educators. The author discusses the advocates’ perspectives, experiences, and improvement strategies in light of Detroit’s complex, market-based educational landscape. Findings pertain to the advocates’ efforts to respond to educational and communal loss, family engagement barriers, insufficient school choice options, and concerns about privatization. Their narratives comprise counter-stories that illustrate theoretical notions of critical care and traditions of Black women’s political resistance used to combat the politics of disposability that hinder many urban communities. The author concludes the article by indicating how the Detroit advocates’ work can inform broader efforts to improve urban education.

‘Triage, transition, and transformation’: Advocacy discourse in urban school reform

“…This was the clearest example of how elite leaders within the Coalition placed priority on achieving key financial and governance reforms, rather than those that challenged the power dynamics that had led to the expansion of school choice with limited guardrails to protect students. In Wilson's (2015) account of African-American women's educational advocacy in Detroit, all of her participants raised "concerns about inequity, choice, competition, and what they perceive as threats of privatization" (p. 18).…”

Perceptions of classroom quality and well-being among Black women teachers of young children

“…With its distinct raced and classed overtones, this gendered history has contributed to the production of an undervalued social institution-the lasting vestiges of which are evidenced in today's racial disparities in pay in the field (Vogtman, 2017). For example, while wages are markedly low for all infant, toddler, and preschool teachers, Black women earn 84 cents to every $1 their white counterparts earn (Ullrich et al, 2016;Whitebook et al, 2018). A sizable number of Black women ECE teachers (23%) live in poverty, and among those with children, 44% are parenting independently (Vogtman, 2017).…”

Closed Schools, Open Markets: A Hot Spot Spatial Analysis of School Closures and Charter Openings in Detroit

“…However, in another instance, Detroit's neighborhoods are commonly portrayed in mainstream narratives as Black, destructive, impoverished, and ground zero for educational dysfunction (Moskowitz, 2017). 8 These perceptions also hold for many Black elected officials who are perceived as politically corrupt and poor fiscal managers (Wilson, 2015). Despite these binary conceptions about Detroit, the city faces harsh realities that are acutely felt in its public school system and that we maintain are connected to the city's past and current educational policies.…”

“…Detroit’s population peaked at 1.85 million people in 1950 and was known as the global epicenter of the automotive industry. However, within the broader context of rampant population decline, deindustrialization, suburbanization, and disinvestment in the public infrastructure, the landscape of Detroit has changed (Galster, 2012; Green, 2015; Wilson, 2015).…”

“…1 By neoliberal , we mean “a loose set of ideas, [practices, and strategies], that market principles should govern how society should work” (Spence, 2015, p. 141). Neoliberalism thus engenders a policy context that rationalizes less state support for public schools, the privatization of public education, and the use of reforms such as charter schools as a policy mechanism for “educational transformation.” Despite this policy context, a dearth of research has connected school closures in Detroit to the neoliberal, racial, and historical policy milieu that shaped the conditions for school closures and the simultaneous opening of charter schools across the city (for exceptions, see Gulosino & Lubienski, 2011; Pedroni, 2011; Wilson, 2015). Furthermore, while scholars have examined urban school closures, we know little about whether school closures and charter openings occur in spatially significant ways.…”