Education in global Chicago and the remaking of contemporary capitalism

Abstract

This article examines the role that transformations in the K‐12 public education sector have played in the ongoing structural crisis of contemporary capitalism and the re/making of North American global cities. More specifically, it explores why and how teachers’ unions have been at the centre of the neoliberalization of public school systems by drawing on a case‐study analysis of Chicago, which has been an experimental ground for the reconstruction of urban governance, labour markets, and education. Like the marketization of public housing, education markets contribute to the knitting together of education policy and neoliberal urban development. Underlying the assault on public education, teachers, and their unions in the United States are the intermingling logics of capital accumulation and white supremacy. Although teachers’ unions have often been complicit in the making of neoliberalism, they also represent the biggest potential challenge to its further advancement through the adoption of a model of social justice, grassroots unionism. Offering a powerful glimmer of hope is the revitalized Chicago Teachers Union who waged an effective—and widely supported—September 2012 strike.