Educational Movements, Not Market Moments

The way education reformers misunderstand the history of the civil rights struggle reveals one of the key flaws in the push for market-based educational solutions. The top-down, managerial, single-minded approach pursued by Duncan and his allies ignores the vital, grassroots efforts underway in low-income communities, many of which directly challenge the market approach to schools that embraces competition, choice without equity provisions, and privatization. These local activists are deeply concerned with a range of problems that prevent public schools from giving poor and working-class children a good education: rampant unemployment, the lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation, and a flawed immigration policy. They want the state to distribute equitable and sufficient resources across communities, not simply to individual schools and parents. And they worry that choice stands to further stratify communities by race and poverty.