Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

10-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Urban Education

Advisor

Ira Shor

Subject Categories

Education Policy

Keywords

Conjunctural Analysis, Critical Policy Analysis, Education, Incarceration, Neoliberalism, Racial Capitalism

Abstract

This dissertation is a comparative policy study of changes in education and incarceration of the past 40 years. Following national and global trends, New York City saw public school and carceral policies converge as the city experienced massive deindustrialization and governmental cutbacks while its political economy shifted to one driven by finance, investment, real estate, and the growth of a low-wage service sector. These changes dramatically increased economic inequality across racial lines, and spurred the intimate linkage of public education and state incarceration as institutional tools for the mass management of low-income communities of color. Following from a growing policy debate in education and criminal justice around the "school-to-prison pipeline," this study analyzes the emergence and structure of correspondence in these two major social sectors. This multiscalar research draws on critical policy analysis and critical discourse analysis to examine federal and state policy vis-Ã -vis case studies of local charter school and drug court reforms. Findings include correspondence in the implementation of data-driven managerial practices and representations, the extension of private nonprofit and foundation influence on policy, and the (re)production and circulation of what Melamed (2006) terms official antiracisms- knowledge systems which deracialize inequality on the one hand, while constructing neoliberal subject positions amenable to racialized processes of disinvestment, dispossession, and discipline on the other.

Download

Share

COinS