The Children of Choice: Public Education Reform and the Evolution of Neoliberal Governance

Abstract

This work examines the accelerating phenomenon of school reform efforts taking place in the United States as a result of evolving relationships between school districts, local government, the non-profit sector, and philanthropic capital. In particular, it examines the evolution of these relationships from three distinct but complementary spatial perspectives: 1) The increasing emphasis given to the individual as a sovereign political scale, advocating self-entrepreneurship and family responsibility as the most efficient and effective means of distributing educational opportunity; 2) Increasing inter-urban competition that is driving an intensification of pro-school choice coalition building and a "moral imperative" for all available participants to contribute to education problems in their metropolitan area; and 3) an increasing devolvement of responsibility to the local scale of schools and districts for the successful implementation of reform projects, accompanied by a pullback of support from funding agencies when these projects fail. The work concludes with some directions for expanding these largely theoretical perspectives to more grounded empirical research.