In $7,000 for Every Student: Arizona’s Ultimate Experiment in School Choice, Sarah Mervosh (2023) points out, Dr. Maes: “In public schools, we are committed to every child who walks through our doors, regardless of the challenges, Dr. Maes said, echoing critics who say that children with the fewest resources and highest needs tend to be left out of the school choice frenzy” (11). The statement: Education is considered as a public good. Students from working-class backgrounds benefit from public education. While funding is cut and sent to private and charter schools. It is, often the working-class students struggling. In comparison, middle-class parents are privileged to send their children to private institutions. 

While neoliberalism affects students, it also affects teachers. There is a focus on teaching subjects such as math, science, English, and history while neglecting art, music, and physical education classes. Therefore, teachers only teach concepts that are diverted from the state and its curriculum. In other words, teachers teach those subjects because they are on the tests/exams. 

How do the education outcomes of students affect the private sector? When funding goes to private schools, it is often the private sector that wins. In other words, the private sector has the human capital (money) to provide for middle-class students. At the same time, working-class students are disproportionately affected. This is because it is often public school funding that goes to private and charter schools. To simplify, it is public schools are the ones that fund private and charter schools.

Marketization of Education: Neoliberalism advocates for market-driven transformations in the education sector and views education as a product. As a result, there is often a push for more excellent school choices, competition among schools, and an open door for private instruction to enter the education industry.

Vouchers and School Choice: Neoliberal emphasis on accountability may result in a greater reliance on market processes, including rating and ranking systems, to assess educational institutions. Under these approaches, underperforming schools might be penalized or shut down, opening doors for private providers to take over.

Cuts to Public Funding: Neoliberal ideas can support cutting back on government spending on education. Reduced public school financing could lower educational standards and increase demand for private education options. Decreased public funding may also raise the appeal of private education options and expose public schools to attempts at privatization. Neoliberal policies often support school choice programs like voucher schemes. These vouchers allow parents to use public money to pay for their children's private school tuition. This approach fosters market competition and incentivizes schools to improve student achievement. However, it may lead to the privatization of education by diverting public funds to private institutions. Neoliberalism also promotes public-private ship involve collaboration between public authorities and private organizations, which can bring in more resources and expertise. Yet, they may also shift power and influence from the public to the private field. Another crucial aspect of neoliberal education reforms is standardized testing and accountability measures that seek to evaluate and improve academic performance.

For example the article, School Choice, talks about Donald Trump passed a policy called "school choice" which allows parents to deny public funds to send their children to private schools. This policy creates competition between public and private schools but more so encouraging private schools. If more children go to private schools then what will happen to the public schools in the future. In a way it's giving parents a "choice" but of course parents will always want what's best for their children. But then again what happen to those who can't afford private education? Neoliberalism is just bringing down public education and going in favor of private schools.

Professor Lyons

SOC 335/Spring 24

Padlet 8/Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism may influence and contribute to the privatization of public education in many different ways. There are two primary veins of privatization at work in schools today. Endogenous privatization which applies market principles to education using choice and competition and exogenous privatization which allows external groups to profit from public education. Education theorist Stephen Ball points out the consequences of these privatization efforts writing that these “are not merely structural and relational: they are also ethical and deviating. They work, together with other changes, to shift the meaning of education, from a public to a private good, from a service to a commodity. 

Reminding us that privatization is not simply a technical change in the management of the delivery of educational services, it involves changes in the meaning and experience of education, what it means to be a teacher and a learner. It changes who we are and our relation to what we do, entering into all aspects of our everyday practices. This definition helps us make sense of the pervasive ways that issues of privatization have invaded schools and sometimes become difficult to detect or isolate. While privatization movements, initiatives and language have impacted all schools, teachers and students, it is important to understand that not all of the challenges faced in schools can be chalked up to neoliberalism and the associated privatization. The web of digressive influences is simply more complicated than can be summarized by one word. 

Another example regarding neoliberalism and public education is in the reading called From Katrina to Maria, due to these crucial hurricanes affecting these places. It occurred that the poorer and rural students and parents in those areas were affected education wise. The government did not provide the services they should have for example bussing for these students to receive their education in Puerto Rico! In New Orleans they later found teachers who were untrained and uncertified, eventually firing 7000 more primary colored teachers and hiring white teachers who were different and could not relate to their students lifestyles or communities backgrounds. There was a lack of nursing staff at the school who could not treat the students' illnesses. Neoliberalism holds that education systems should be run according to free market principles. Neoliberals believe that education should be privatized both endogenous and exogenous, parents and students given more choice and voice and they also advocate for more top down surveillance and performance management.

 Successive education policies up until the present day have had to tweak the above competitive education system to try and stop schools from excluding weaker students and to encourage a wider range of schools to take on lower ability students. According to the reading School Choice, Neoliberalism  a paragraph basically stated that the education system is a fixed money paradigm. If the government doesn't benefit from an economical point then they won't get involved. A question I have here is since the Governor signed the legislation allowing students who withdraw from the public system to use their share of state funding for private school, homeschooling, or online education. What happens to the public schools? Do the teachers and faculty staff members lose their jobs, or do they get transferred to these private schools? Does this mean the value of public schools are decreasing?

 What is going to happen to public schools in the next 10 years, will they even exist for lower class students? One thing I do know is not all parents have the financial resources to put their children in private or better high class school systems. Yet alone homeschool them when they have full time jobs, other children, and many other responsibilities to attend to! Who’s going to fund the textbooks for the students or do the parents have to supply those responsibilities out of pocket, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner? The reading also stated making educational funding portable is part of a much wider political movement that began in the 1900’s  known to scholars as Neoliberalism. Which views the creation of markets as necessary for the existence of individual liberty. In the neoliberal view, if your public institutions and spaces don't resemble markets, with a range of consumer options, then you aren't really free. The goal of neoliberalism is thereby to roll back the state, privatize public services, or (as in the case of vouchers) engineer forms of consumer choice and market discipline in the public sector. Can Neoliberalism in school systems be fixed in the future and how, or can we really call ourselves free in the educational aspect of life? 

In the article From Katrina to Maria: Disaster Capitalism’s Playbook for School Reform, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, privatization was introduced under the guise of assisting, yet its true motive was to profit from public education. This commodification of education exploits the supposed free public school system, harming low-income areas and perpetuating debt cycles that benefit creditors.

The comprehensive analysis by Rethinking Schools reveals how neoliberalism burdens underfunded public schools, diverting resources and worsening inequities. Marginalized communities are disproportionately burdened by debt, which perpetuates their continuous position of low income.  Loans issued to low-income schools are inherently unfair compared to predominantly white schools, highlighting systemic injustices.

The influence of neoliberalism on the privatization of public schools cannot be ignored. The profit-driven policies and market-based reforms it advocates for, such as school vouchers and charter schools, prioritize competition and individual choice over the collective provision of education. Such an approach impacts the public education system's ability to ensure equitable access to quality education for all students. Neoliberal practices like reliance on debt financing and the commodification of education further establish private interests in the educational landscape, which perpetuates inequalities and leaves marginalized communities behind. By prioritizing profit over the public good, neoliberalism fuels the privatization of public schools, exacerbating disparities and hindering efforts to achieve educational equity.

Public schools are being closed at a faster rate, and charter schools are opening up just as quickly. This brings me to the reading "From Katrina to Maria: Disaster Capitalism's Playbook for School Reform". The Net Roots Nation Conference looked into similarities in the aftermath of hurricanes, Katrina and Maria. Both hurricanes happened in different parts of the world, Puerto Rico and New Orleans. however, they both had "eerie" similarities in the "reforms" of two different school districts. The aftermath of the hurricanes put school kids in jeopardy because most of the schools were destroyed. This opened up room for the capitalists and "privatization hawks" as described, to dive in and take over. They went to help the kids by rebuilding the schools but instead they only went in to make profit for themselves. Parents were frustrated because instead of rebuilding same schools, charter school were built. The public school system were poor and post Katrina and Maria got poorer.

As mom, writer, activist - AShana Bigard said, the "so-called reform's" (New Orleans) goal was to help the community, create citizens who understands the community, condition and control, then we failed. In the end the ones who suffer are usually children and children of color. Black and brown children who cannot afford private schools, or who may have an IEP and cannot attend charter schools. capitalist does not make it easy for minority children to attend schools. A great example is in NYC, where every school year new charter schools open up. a charter school opens up. This is all for profit, the new schools are taking children and funds from the public schools.

In the article "School Debt: The Great Unequalizer," we learn about the financial challenges that public schools face. Due to a lack of resources, public schools are constantly in debt and unable to make necessary building repairs, which can lead to health concerns for students and teachers.

Another article, "$7,200 Per Student: Arizona’s School Voucher Experiment in School Choice," highlights Tom Horne's efforts to provide private school subsidies to all students in Arizona. However, this means that funding is cut from public schools and allocated towards private schools, leaving students who cannot afford private schools behind and perpetuating the system of inequality.

The article "From Katrina to Maria: Disaster Capitalism’s Playbook for School Reform" discusses how areas like New Orleans and Puerto Rico have faced severe crises in public education due to natural disasters. Public education needs serious reform, but government and capitalist efforts have been slow to bring about change for students. Instead, privatization is promoted to "save" schools and students, ultimately draining resources and money from the community.

In conclusion, it is crucial to move away from neoliberalism to prevent further promotion of school privatization and perpetuation of inequality in education. Collaborative efforts between schools should be prioritized to ensure the best education for all students, regardless of socio-economic status.

I believe that schools should provide to all , quality education and that it should not be that hard to find a school that provides that or having to go or send children to far away schools just to get quality education.

With the Neoliberal policies supports the establishment of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated institutions. These schools have more autonomy in their curriculum and management compared to traditional public schools. Also, Neoliberal education reforms often prioritize standardized testing as a measure of school and teacher effectiveness. This emphasis on testing can lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and an increased focus on test preparation, which may benefit private companies that provide testing materials and services.

In essence, neoliberalism fosters the idea that market principles should guide education policy, leading to the erosion of public education systems and the expansion of privatized alternatives.

This trend is further illustrated by examples like Arizona's $7,200 per-student voucher system, which The New York Timesdescribes as an extreme case of school choice where funding follows the student to private or charter schools, exacerbating inequality. The aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Maria also shows how neoliberal policies exploit crises to push privatization, as discussed in The People's World, where disaster capitalism leads to the dismantling of public schools and their replacement with private alternatives. The Rethinking Schools article “School Debt: The Great Equalizer” reveals how these policies create debt and shame for low-income families, making the inequalities of the education system even more pronounced. These examples highlight how neoliberalism turns education into a market-driven sector, deepening social and economic divides.

Neoliberalism really shapes how public education is getting privatized in a few big ways. Firstly, it pushes the idea that competition is the way to go. They say that if schools compete, they’ll get better. So, we see more private and charter schools popping up because of this thinking. Then, there’s the issue of money. Neoliberal policies often cut back on public funding for schools. When schools don’t have enough money, it makes people think they’re failing. That’s when privatization starts looking like a good option for parents and leaders who want better choices. The school choice movement is also a big deal. With vouchers and charter schools, they’re saying that parents should be able to pick the school that works best for their kids. It’s all about having options outside of public schools. Also, there’s a heavy focus on testing and performance. When public schools don’t hit those test scores, it makes them look bad, which fuels the idea that we need privatization to fix things.