Neoliberal etiology and educational failure: A critical exploration

Abstract

Blaming teachers and schools for perceived or actual educational failures are popular tropes for justifying educational reforms in the United States. Critical educational research implicates neoliberalism in the normalized positioning of teachers and schools as the key suspects in educational failures. This article critiques the etiology of neoliberalism through a critical analysis of the nature of causal relata, causal relations, and the assumed populations in causal claims that attribute educational failure to teachers and schools. It makes the case that though the neoliberal etiology may work well for the neoliberal purposes of accountability and governance of public education and the teaching profession, it does not offer valid causal explanations for the instructional dynamic that contributes to educational failures and successes in the school settings. The article argues that the attribution error of blaming teachers and schools can be avoided by adopting complex causality frameworks for understanding educational failure.

Keywords:

• Neoliberalism
• causality
• educational failure
• accountability

Acknowledgments

I deeply appreciate Mardi Schmeichel and the reviewers for their insightful critiques that contributed greatly to the quality and rigor of the paper.

Notes

1 TNTP was formerly known as The New Teacher Project.

2 In contrast, a relational ontology will make the case that it is teaching and learning as relations that gives rise to distinct entities labeled as the teachers and students.