Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 9.04 Education
Presentation #1 Title
Mining the Schoolhouse: Neoliberal Education Policy in Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This paper explores how contemporary neoliberal policy has transformed public education institutions serving the poor into sources of profit for private enterprise, with a focus on the incursion of such practices into Appalachia. The schooling of impoverished people ironically provides many opportunities for wealth creation, eagerly seized upon by education entrepreneurs and the well-financed reformers who wrought such transformations. This paper theorizes the operation of schooling on these terms, and demonstrates its main points with empirical illustrations. Examples of the direct extraction of capital from the poor (such as cycles of school closure, neighborhood disinvestment and displacement, charter and selective enrollment school openings, and gentrification; exhortations to assume unreasonable debt for postsecondary schooling; and the rise of for-profit colleges) and of indirect extraction through outsourced services and products claiming to ameliorate the educational challenges of the poor (such as vouchers; educational management organizations; federal funding of tutors in schools failing to meet accountability standards; diversion of federal monies into competitive grant programs). This program is justified by an ideology of personal entrepreneurial responsibility in which the marketplace is the natural framework for human interaction, and ensures that the schooling of poor students at once broadcasts their alleged failures and demonstrates the “need” for market-based interventions. But the narrative in Appalachia also tends to reinforce stereotypes about the region, while the practices it rationalizes further impoverish the area’s people and places.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Caitlin Howley is the Associate Director of the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center (ARCC), and conducts evaluation of K-12 and postsecondary programs for at-risk students across the region; her research interests include rural education and the dynamics of social stratification.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
An education consultant, Craig Howley previously directed dissertations for the Educational Administration program at Ohio University and served as co-director of the research initiative of the NSF-funded Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM); his research focuses on educational scale, rural education, and the relationship between culture, political economy, and schooling.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Wesley Kuemmel is a student in the graduate humanities program at Marshall University; his research interests include Appalachian studies, labor history, and the influence of neoliberal policy on higher education.
Mining the Schoolhouse: Neoliberal Education Policy in Appalachia
Harris Hall 136
This paper explores how contemporary neoliberal policy has transformed public education institutions serving the poor into sources of profit for private enterprise, with a focus on the incursion of such practices into Appalachia. The schooling of impoverished people ironically provides many opportunities for wealth creation, eagerly seized upon by education entrepreneurs and the well-financed reformers who wrought such transformations. This paper theorizes the operation of schooling on these terms, and demonstrates its main points with empirical illustrations. Examples of the direct extraction of capital from the poor (such as cycles of school closure, neighborhood disinvestment and displacement, charter and selective enrollment school openings, and gentrification; exhortations to assume unreasonable debt for postsecondary schooling; and the rise of for-profit colleges) and of indirect extraction through outsourced services and products claiming to ameliorate the educational challenges of the poor (such as vouchers; educational management organizations; federal funding of tutors in schools failing to meet accountability standards; diversion of federal monies into competitive grant programs). This program is justified by an ideology of personal entrepreneurial responsibility in which the marketplace is the natural framework for human interaction, and ensures that the schooling of poor students at once broadcasts their alleged failures and demonstrates the “need” for market-based interventions. But the narrative in Appalachia also tends to reinforce stereotypes about the region, while the practices it rationalizes further impoverish the area’s people and places.
