Slow violence and neoliberal education reform: Reflections on a school closure.

Abstract

In 2009, the New York City Department of Education determined that Brandeis High School would be closed. Far from an anomaly, Brandeis is one among more than a hundred schools that have been closed since the recentralization of the City's school system under Mayoral Control. Education activists and critical scholars of education have described such "sweeps" of school closings and the broader constellation of projects and technologies associated with them as indicative of neoliberal education reform and of the ways that "accumulation by dispossession" (Harvey, 2005) plays out on the U.S. "home front." Despite an increased galvanization of resistance in recent years, the authors interrogate what else we might learn about neoliberal education restructuring (and how we might contest it) by attending to the last years of Brandeis in order to specifically explore the following: 1) how the conditions of dispossession impact resistance from the perspective of school workers, and 2) how the process of dispossession was accompanied by an investment from those with privilege in the public good of education that was contingent upon race-and class-based exclusions.

Rethinking the School Closure Research: School Closure as Spatial Injustice

“…Instead, they can be exclusionary and discriminatory. Together, these closure processes-justifications, policies, and implementation-reflect a broader agenda for education that, many argue, prioritizes competition and minimizes democratic participation in education (Aggarwal, Mayorga, & Nevel, 2012;Allweis, Grant, & Manning, 2015;Aviles & Heybach, 2017;A. W. Johnson, 2012;Killeen & Sipple, 2000;Lipman, 2007Lipman, , 2014Lipman, , 2018Lipman & Haines, 2007;Slater, 2018;Waitoller & Super, 2017).…”

“…A. Miller, 1990;Salmon, 1990;Williams, 2013). In cities, gentrification often facilitated this outmigration, forcing out poor Black and Latinx families in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City (Aggarwal et al, 2012;Dowdall, 2011;Lipman & Haines, 2007). A study by Burdick-Will et al 2013, for example, found that closed Chicago schools were located in "revitalizing" neighborhoods with changing demographics-specifically, high-but-decreasing proportions of Black residents and falling numbers of children.…”

The Enduring Atlanta Compromise

“…Furthermore, the slow violence of the notification and implementation of our focal school’s closure is inextricably linked to the neighborhood’s home foreclosure crisis, as a continued form of “redevelopment” (Aggarwal et al, 2012; Davis and Oakley, 2013). As families are pushed out of the neighborhood, the neighborhood’s school children are similarly pushed out of their neighborhood school.…”

Active Solidarity: Centering the Demands and Vision of the Black Lives Matter Movement in Teacher Education

“…Less visible are the slow violences that occur within education that fuel Black suffering. Punitive discipline policies that are purported to keep students safe but in fact disproportionately suspend Black students (Smith & Harper, 2015), low expectations of Black students (Irvine, 1991), and sustained cycles of disinvestment in the social, academic, and material resources students need (Aggarwal, Mayorga, & Nevel, 2012) are just some examples of slow violence in schools. These everyday processes eat away at the health, well-being, and sense of belonging for students.…”