Competing Paradigms of Educational Justice: Parent Organizing for Educational Equity in a Neoliberal Reform Context

Abstract

This article examines a grassroots parent organizing effort in a large, highpoverty, urban school district. Drawing from ethnographic field research at a community-based popular education organization, the study describes how parent organizers worked to educate and mobilize Latina/o immigrant parents on issues of educational justice and equity. It identifies three pillars of their approach-a social theory, a theory of change, and a theory of knowledgeand argues that these were not reducible to a set of practices or methods; rather, they constituted a coherent paradigm of educational justice. This paradigm differs in significant ways from the neoliberal justice paradigm that currently dominates education reform and policy. By examining points of tension between these two competing paradigms, this article seeks to accomplish two aims. First, it aims to deepen our understanding of how underlying paradigms of educational justice shape the work of educating, organizing, and reforming schools. Second, it aims to expose the cultural specificity, or nonuniversality, of the neoliberal paradigm in order to challenge its hegemonic status in education reform and policy.

Mothers' perceptions of educational access and engagement in a context of urban austerity

“…A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T these historic and structural factors reduce the ability of many poor and Black or Latino parents to access quality public schools for their children. Nygreen (2016) compares paradigms of educational justice that seek to explain and address educational inequity. The most dominant is the neoliberal paradigm, an ideological system as well as a set of political-economic policies that favor the application of market-based principles to all aspects of public life, including education and social services (Harvey, 2005).…”

“…The logic of neoliberalism also manifests through decisionmaking structures in which technocratic "experts" make decisions without the infusion of politics, and thereby with limited democratic accountability. Neoliberal principles are embedded within educational policies such as the privatization of educational services, increased reliance on standardized testing, introduction of incentives and sanctions for schools, promotion of school competition, and dismantling of organized labor such as teachers' unions (Nygreen, 2016). Nygreen (2016) suggests that the neoliberal paradigm differs from a communitybased parent organizing logic in terms of how root causes are defined, how parents engage, and what solutions are deemed viable.…”

“…Neoliberal principles are embedded within educational policies such as the privatization of educational services, increased reliance on standardized testing, introduction of incentives and sanctions for schools, promotion of school competition, and dismantling of organized labor such as teachers' unions (Nygreen, 2016). Nygreen (2016) suggests that the neoliberal paradigm differs from a communitybased parent organizing logic in terms of how root causes are defined, how parents engage, and what solutions are deemed viable. In contrast to neoliberal logic, the parent organizing approach suggests that systemic injustice is the root cause of educational inequality.…”

Negotiating Tensions: Grassroots Organizing, School Reform, and the Paradox of Neoliberal Democracy

“…These activities I described in this section—both the parent meeting and the carwash workers lesson—reflect an underlying set of governing assumptions about teaching, learning, and knowledge (see Nygreen for further elaboration of this point). Tensions between this popular education paradigm and the tacit assumptions of neoliberal education rose to the surface as Alianza pursued the pilot school organizing campaign.…”

“…This paper begins from the assumption that Freire‐based popular education and neoliberal education reform represent two fundamentally different paradigms, with distinct underlying assumptions about teaching, learning, knowledge, and educational purpose (see Nygreen for elaboration of these points). Furthermore, these conflicting paradigms do not simply exist in our heads—there is a materiality to these ideas.…”