Centring race in contemporary educational privatization policies: the genealogy of U.S. ‘private school choice’ and its implications for research

ABSTRACT

Just ahead of the 2017 U.S. presidential inauguration the Hoover Institute convened a forum to explore policy avenues for privatizing public education. The option favoured by forum moderator and Fordham Institute President, Michael Petrilli, was the tax-credit scholarship, a policy currently employed in 18 states. Funded through donations from corporations and individuals whoreceive a tax benefit, these programs are managed through state revenue codes, not education codes. In 2019,U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos proposed a federal private school choice program despite the fact that evaluations have struggled to demonstrate any evidence of educational benefit. This paper argues that present-day efforts to privatize public education are rooted in social, political, and economic projects that consolidate power among white Americans. Finally, the paper sketches the contours of a historical-geographic materialist research agenda that examines the implications of privatization in public education for racial justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Privatization
• school choice
• segregation
• neoliberalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).