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THE CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM: POLICY, POWER, AND PEDAGOGY

Klaf, Suzanna

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2009, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Geography.
Since 2001 public schools in the United States have been subjected to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This federal level reform policy was implemented in order to improve the state of public education and bring all students to grade level by 2013-2014. This is to be achieved by holding all schools accountable to the public. Accountability mechanisms are deployed in order to align underperforming schools with the neoliberal rationality underpinning contemporary school governance. In this dissertation I critique NCLB. I do so by filtering the policy through Foucauldian and critical geographic lenses. Foucault’s concepts of governmentality, biopower, techniques of governance, and power/knowledge lend themselves to unpacking and understanding NCLB for what it is: a policy that is imbued with power, circulates power, and produces power/knowledge. Despite the top-down nature of NCLB, I argue that in the Foucauldian sense there is room for critique/resistance at multiple scales and by multiple actors. I argue that NCLB’s aspatial, de-contextual and colorblind nature has real socio-spatial consequences. I problematize the taken-for-granted NCLB accountability mechanisms. In addition to a text-based critique, I weave original illustrations as part of a critical visual narrative. Through qualitative methods, this research aims at going beyond accountability data to shed light on the impacts of NCLB on perceptions, attitudes, practices, identities, and representations of people and place. Teacher narratives provide a glimpse into schools struggling to meet NCLB requirements. I focus specifically on inner city Title I schools, those that find themselves particularly squeezed by the neoliberal straitjacket, restrained by retrenchment, testing, and the labeling of school performance/quality. This one-size-fits-all garment is applied with disregard to the challenges and obstacles faced by inner city schools. Inner city schools find themselves tackling mounting pressure to improve student performance and align themselves with market norms. Pressure is also induced by the hegemonic representations of school quality produced by NCLB. Teacher insights highlight disconnect between these policy-produced representations and school realities.
Mei-Po Kwan (Committee Co-Chair)
Nancy Ettlinger (Committee Co-Chair)
Kevin Cox (Committee Member)
229 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Klaf, S. (2009). THE CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM: POLICY, POWER, AND PEDAGOGY [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1245182970

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Klaf, Suzanna. THE CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM: POLICY, POWER, AND PEDAGOGY. 2009. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1245182970.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Klaf, Suzanna. "THE CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM: POLICY, POWER, AND PEDAGOGY." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1245182970

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)