Ethnography of a Neoliberal School

Building Cultures of Success

Garth Stahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317205111
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

As a school ethnography, this book explores the controversial schooling practices and strategies embedded in charter school management organizations (CMOs), as well as how these practices influence teaching and learning, school leadership, teachers' professional identities, and students' understanding of success. By theorizing the common practices within the organization, Stahl connects current research in neoliberal governance, neoliberal structuring of educational policy, aspiration and social reproduction in schooling. Honing in on the discourse on education reform, Stahl demonstrates that a "unique blend" of neoliberalism and social justice values have permeated the CMO's institutional culture, promoting the belief that adopting corporate practices will fix America's schools and ensure equity of opportunity for all. The inclusion of institutional texts (emails, Blackberry messages, posters, and rubrics) balances the personal-subjective and inter-subjective to capture a blend of neoliberalism and social justice reframing.

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Introduction

Their controversial methods sound like a cross between Harvard and a Marine Corps boot camp: strict dress and posture code, high (and rigid) expectations, public shaming of underachievers, zero tolerance for shenanigans.

(Williams, 2015)

Essential to the work of educational researchers is our ability to understand and document the impact of fundamental societal and political changes upon the education system. Charter schools, as part of the education reform movement in the United States, represent a fascinating policy experiment for exploring neo-liberal interests, issues of social justice and the cultivation of neoliberal subjectivities. A main pillar of institutional ethnography is to study “the social relations of knowledge of the social,” where the method of inquiry seeks to enlarge the scope of what becomes visible in order to show how we “are connected into the extended social relations of ruling and economy and their intersections” (Smith, 2005, p. 29). This institutional ethnography is positioned within an important era for public education, with unprecedented private resources being expended to actively increase forms of school choice in urban markets—all under the guise of educational equity. This is what Griffith and Smith (2014) call New Public Management (NPM), which involves the “imposition of managerial regimes modelled on those already operative in the sphere of private enterprise” (p. 5). NPM has given birth to what they call “‘institutional circuits’ for managing front-line work” and is applicable to many institutions. As the charter school movement has expanded rapidly due to philanthropic support, as well as enabling federal and state policies, a niche high-end sector has taken a proactive leadership role. These networks of schools, known as Charter School Management Organizations (CMOs), sometimes referred to as MOs (Management Organizations) (cf. Scott, 2009) or EMOs (Education Management Organizations), operate as a franchised networks and are, according to education reformers, the models to follow. These institutions are often characterized by extended school days, an exacting focus on improving standardized test scores and acculturating low-SES students toward middle-class aspirations (Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003). The focus of this book is on my experience with the educational reform movement and working in a controversial CMO on the East Coast of America.

Prior to the advent of charter schools in the United States, there existed no consistent evidence that significant numbers of students from low socio-economic backgrounds in large urban areas could excel academically and attend elite Ivy League universities. Within the US educational reform effort—which depicts itself as a new civil rights movement—charter schools are often celebrated by politicians and celebrities as a simple and unproblematic antidote for complex problems. There exist many misunderstanding and myths about charter schools, with the 2014 Gallup poll finding that 48 percent of Americans did not know charter schools were public (Bushaw & Calderon, 2014; Sanchez, 2017). Briefly, the educational reform movement, led by think tanks, lobbyists and philanthropists, promotes certain leverages of change, such as: evaluating teachers by test scores; awarding merit bonuses; firing teachers and leadership who do not achieve higher test scores, opposing tenure and seniority; closing public schools they consider ineffective; and encouraging privatization by opening more charters schools (both non-profit and for profit). Many of the consistently high-functioning charter schools actively recruit university graduates with little or no experience of teaching in a traditional public school system. Charter schools, in summary, typically serve low socio-economic students in urban centers; have unprecedented freedom/autonomy from bureaucracy; and are subject to the neoliberal governance of market forces and lottery systems. Also, free from union involvement which influences the public sector, charter schools can set their own hours and have tremendous flexibility in their ability to hire and fire staff as necessary. Bulkley (2012, p. 59) argues that autonomy and flexibility are essential aspects of what advocates call a “theory of charter schools,” alongside the interplay between market forces, increased accountability and school choice.

Handsomely funded, the reform movement promotes a specific ideology through conferences and publications in order to advance a shared agenda. In terms of language, the wording of “reform” has positive connotations in the American context, and the movement has capitalized on this, even extending the ideological discourse to include the use of militaristic language (for example, corps, academies, mission) to further what they consider a call to action. This deployment of language can be considered as evidence of how the moral and political principles of equality are co-opted by the ruling class to capture the language of democracy and redefine it in private terms (Saltman, 2000, p. 53). In taking on the reformers, Ravitch (2013, p. 34) argues, “Though they speak of ‘reform,’ what they really mean is deregulation and privatization.” Language is central to the analysis of discourses that frame institutions.

I furthermore, institutional ethnography, as a sociology for people, urges us to consider the overlaps and disjunctures between individual identities and institutional identities. As Smith (2005, p. 27) observes, “how people become caught up in, and how our lives become organized by, the institutional foci of the ruling relations” is “mediated by institutionally designed realities that organize relations …” that objectify and assign subject positions. For analytical purposes, “discourse” in this book refers to the translocal coordination of practices of talking, writing, reading, watching where people participate and their participation both regulates and reproduces discourse. Thus, for me, joining the education reform movement and then removing myself from the movement became a difficult negotiation with power, ethics and my own social justice principles, or what Ball (2016, p. 1129) calls “subjectivity as a site of struggle.” As I worked as a leader for one year in the CMO of Achievement Academy, I both studied and enacted a model of neoliberal schooling, a model that was strategically designed to raise aspirations and mitigate the impact of poverty for low-income students of color.

Shortly after their appearance on the educational scene, charters were quickly co-opted, first by the Democrats for Education Reform (a group of Wall Street hedge fund managers who contribute heavily to political campaigns with a pro-charter agenda) and subsequently by philanthropic organizations, such as the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Robin Hood Foundation. Intensive lobbying of politicians and the rhetoric of reform has led to the continual growth of charters. According to this rhetoric, students from low socio-economic backgrounds are held back from academic success by mismanaged public schools and lazy or inadequate teachers who enjoy the protection of local and national unions. The reform movement’s edu-celebrities (including Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, John Deasy, David Levin and Geoffrey Canada) continually use the national press and social media to make this pervasive rhetoric unquestionably hegemonic (Brill, 2011; Ravitch, 2013). According to Swalwell and Apple (2011, p. 373), “the web woven between charter schools, venture capitalists, and neoconservative think tanks forms an increasingly powerful, interconnected force intent on influencing votes on policies supporting the expansion of charter schools and even running candidates for office.” As change-makers, the agendas of these powerful venture philanthropists foster potent discourses around how schools can become more effective institutions for vulnerable populations specifically in terms of teacher quality, teacher training and effective management. Scott (2009, p. 107) writes, “these new philanthropists have become among the most prominent and influential educational leaders and policy makers currently influencing state departments of education and the leadership within many urban school systems.” While advocates and founders of charter schools may represent very different political and philosophical perspectives—from neo-conservative members to more leftist and progressive educators who seek autonomy from a state-run system (see Rofes, 1996; Stuart Wells, 1997)—they all align in one way: they are interested in what they consider radical change and new ways of doing things.

With substantial investments in funding and bipartisan support through both the Bush and Obama administrations, charter schools went in record time from policy experiment to a permanent fixture. Bolstered through nationwide networks, high attaining CMOs have grown exponentially. As Kevin Hall, CEO of the Charter Growth Fund notes, “Over the past 10 years, the total number of students attending schools run by high-performing CMOs increased at least tenfold, from approximately 10,000 students in 2000 to more than 100,000 students today. Over the next decade, the opportunity exists for CMOs to continue this pace of growth and serve more than 1 million students by 2020” (Hall & Lake, 2011, p. 65). Most estimates put the total philanthropic investment in national Charter School Management Organizations at around $500 million (Hall & Lake, 2011, p. 66). However, the investment is uneven; what was actually created was a hierarchy with a top-end niche of CMOs with everything else below. As Ableidinger, Steiner, Spong and Hassel (2012, p. 9) note, “Although little research exists on the highest-performing independently operated schools, we do know that the highest-performing charter networks have shown exceptional promise to serve the students most in need.” According to the rhetoric of reform, there exist numerous CMOs operating in an ethical manner which demonstrate that traditionally underserved students can and do achieve at high levels, specifically KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), Uncommon Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Success Academy, Democracy Prep, DC Prep, Mastery Public Schools, Achievement First, Green Dot Public Schools, YES Prep Public Schools, IDEA Public Schools and Rocketship Education (Hall & Lake, 2011, p. 68).

In neoliberal times, school “failure” and “success” are documented according to a strict accountability agenda. Charter schools, which largely exist as autonomous entities, operate under the policy remit that their continued existence is determined by student performance on high-stakes state testing. Failure to achieve the necessary test scores results in revoking the charter and thus immediate school closure. Therefore, these institutions are fiercely results-driven environments. In order to ensure the academic attainment of their students (and the institution’s continued existence), many CMOs ascribe assiduously to “no excuses” practices which have led them to be described as “boot camps.” Critics have highlighted charter schools as a significant part of neoliberalism’s continual assault on the education space; CMOs often draw upon the practices of corporate America—a “Goldman Sachs model” of zero-tolerance, firing the bottom ten percent of under-performing staff each year. In line with the coordinated discourse promoted by the educational reform movement, CMOs believe poverty is not an excuse, and effective schools can exist anywhere with any population. “No excuses” schooling, a main tenet in the education reform agenda, borrows heavily from “zero tolerance” policing and, in a classroom setting, this translates into the belief that the smallest infraction can and will be met with a consequence. The scholarship presented in this book explores how powerful discourses shape controversial schooling practices and how these institutional strategies have the capacity to inculcate certain subjectivities around teaching and learning, school leadership, professional identities and understandings of success.

My critical interest in the school reform movement in the United States dates back approximately 12 years. During my master’s degree studies at New York University, I interned in the New York City’s Charter School Incubator Program during 2005–6. Capitalizing on dramatic shifts in educational policy toward school choice, this now-defunct program was designed to start up charter schools, which, at this time, were a relatively new development on the East Coast of the United States. Before a school could be “greenlit” and properly funded by the city, it had to pass certain procedures, and, ultimately, most of the potential zygote programs died off, including ours. As I watched the charter movement grow during my graduate studies, I read Lipman (2011), Ravitch (2010) and Brill (2011)—texts which document the political pressures and developments which shaped the reform movement and how the rhetoric of reform influenced national, state and local policies. Then, after completing my PhD, I worked in a leadership position for what is called a “high-functioning” and “highly effective” CMO. The CMO I worked for, which I call Achievement Academy, was co-educational and served African-American and Latino children in an impoverished urban area where it consistently gained the top test scores for the state, outperforming the White middle- and upper-class suburbs. Students at this CMO were admitted via a city-run lottery system and the waiting list was well into the triple digits.¹ Despite Achievement Academy being registered as a non-profit, the CEO received a six figure annual salary.

This institutional ethnography draws on my experiences as a part of a Leadership Team working at a highly contentious CMO and the focus is on one school in the network, H-West, situated in an area of concentrated levels of poverty that had a high potential to limit educational aspirations, opportunities and outcomes for students of color. Where past ethnographic research has documented the frustrations from a lack of access to institutions (Cipollone & Stich, 2012; Lareau, 2003), I had extensive access to the identity work and perceptions of both staff and students. In fact, as an employee, I was assigned to study the practices of the institution. I had full remit to go where I wanted and speak to whom I wanted in order to perform my duties of preserving and fostering a culture of exactness and guarding against any infringements to that culture. Moving around H-West, and sometimes to other school sites in the Achievement Academy network, increased my understanding, as both agent and observer, of the customs and habits integral to the CMO’s model.

The aim of the research is to draw on my own experiences to ethnographically document the daily culture-building and maintenance practices of one school site and make theoretical connections to the formation of neoliberal subjectivities; it is through a reflection on the everyday milieu that we can come to understand how subjectivities become constituted (Smith, 1987, 2005). My lived experience, as central to the narrative, emerges from me as an ethnographer among particular people and from my self-reflection. What structures my experience is my awareness, recognition, feelings where I notice and learn from the interchanges between my body and the world.

Critical ethnography helps us unearth how societal traditions, expectations and opportunities are passed down to the next generation. Ethnography has always faced criticisms for only documenting the surface of events in particular local settings, rather than seeking to understand the deeper social forces and trends shaping society (Hammersley, 2006; Weis & Fine, 2012). It is important to keep in mind that a significant percentage of America’s richest (and whitest) one percent lives less than three miles from the school doors of H-West. While the research is situated in what Weis and Fine (2012, p. 173) call “aggressive neoliberal inscriptions on public education policy and practice,” I illustrate the complexities and contradictions of educating children in an urban space in accordance with the pillars of the education reform movement, as I recount my experiences through a retrospective analysis. My experience at Achievement Academy is, at its very core, a discussion of my reflexivity in relation to neoliberal governance, and each move in the narrative ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• PART I
• PART II
• Appendix A: Qualities of Exemplary Teaching Deliverables
• Index