Overview

From Public Schools to Privatization provides an in-depth and up-to-date critical analysis of the marketization and privatization of urban public schools in the United States. Drawing on critical race policy analysis and ethnographic methods, this book examines the gap between urban teachers’ daily experiences of marketization and the policy discourses of politicians, policymakers, and reformers used to rationalize market policies. Tracing the arc of marketization from the rise of neoliberal market-based education policies in the 1980s to the present, the book also situates ethnographic vignettes of teachers’ work lives and teacher testimonies in their historical, political, and economic context to show how broader racialized political economic forces have shaped teachers’ work. Ultimately, this book argues that both major political parties in the United States have embraced marketization and that, in the current moment, we are experiencing an effort to dismantle public education entirely through privatization. Nevertheless, the author suggests that there is hope in the resistance of urban teachers, social justice unionism, and the promise of organizing a broad multiracial, pro-democracy, pro-worker social movement.

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9781041132660

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Reviews

“Some books arrive at just the right time. In From Public Schools to Privatization, Kathleen Nolan traces the decades-long racial-capitalist project of neoliberal restructuring of U.S. public education through to the current crisis: Project 2025's white Christian nationalist ‘authoritarian marketization’ agenda of full privatization and anti-‘woke ideology.’ Nolan’s rich ethnographic data vividly demonstrate the cumulatively destructive impact of this trajectory on urban teaching, but also the ‘rise’ of teachers and teacher union locals for racial justice and strong urban schools.” Pauline Lipman, Professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, USA “In From Public Schools to Privatization, Dr. Kathleen Nolan offers a sweeping and poignant analysis of the changes in teachers’ labor over the last three decades. Through interviews with teachers, this book critically examines how rise of neoliberal education policies and conservative nationalism have resulted in an all-out conservative attack on public education, while also showing us the hope that individual teachers and the collective power of teachers’ unions can give us.” Wayne Au, Dean and Professor, School of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell, USA

Author Information

Kathleen Nolan is a lecturer and the assistant director of English language arts in the Program in Teacher Preparation at Princeton University.

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