Market mobilities/immobilities: mutation, path-dependency, and the spread of charter school policies in the United States

ABSTRACT

Over the past 25 years charter school policies have spread through the United States at a rapid pace. However, despite this rapid growth these policies have spread unevenly across the country with important variations in how charter school systems function in each state. Drawing on case studies in Michigan and Oregon, this article argues that mobile education policies are best conceptualized as made up of both mobile and immobile elements that continually shape and reshape those policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Charter schools
• education markets
• immobilities
• path dependency
• policy mobilities
• policy mutation

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Professors Kalervo Gulson and Marcia McKenzie for their invitation to present this paper at the 2016 conference of the American Educational Research Association as well as the editors of Critical Studies in Education, specifically Professor Trevor Gale and Dr. Stephen Parker, for their help in seeing this paper through to publication. The author also thanks the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. One interview was conducted with two participants.

2. Following Brenner, Peck, and Theodore (2010), neo-liberalism is understood in this article as the expansion of market-based competition and commodification into the state as well as everyday life. Furthermore, as Peck and Tickell (2002) argue, neoliberalization does not involve simply the ‘roll back’ of the state, but also the ‘roll out’ of new formations that actively place people within market relations. Therefore, both voucher and charter school programmes, which position students as consumers within a competitive market for education lie well within the boundaries of neo-liberal thought.

3. This picture may be different if one considers tuition tax credits a voucher programme. However, because tuition tax credits require an outlay of money on the part of parents rather than providing them with money that can be taken to any school, this article considers them a separate policy model.

4. While this article was published slightly after the advent of choice policies as a method of maintaining segregation, Friedman (1955) claims that this co-occurrence was entirely accidental, writing in a footnote that the paper had been ‘essentially in its present form’ when he learned of the segregationist proposals.

5. 52% of African Americans in Michigan are under emergency management but only 2% of the state’s White population (Gottesdiener, 2015).

6. Although it must be noted that they have yet to sponsor a single charter school.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 201211DVC-236396-303245].

Notes on contributors

Dan Cohen

Dan Cohen is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia.