Opening Act: Neocolonial Urban Education Reform and the Detroit Public Schools

Abstract

Background/Context: Urban educational systems have garnered focused examination as bastions of educational inequity, particularly along race and class cleavages. These systems are often cited as inefficient bureaucratic institutions plagued by financial mismanagement and political corruption that produce dismal achievement outcomes. Contemporary educational research demonstrates that neoliberal education reforms exacerbate racialized inequity, but we are less clear on the terms of this racialized inequity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This article explores how we may deepen our conception of ghettoization, as espoused by Jean Anyon and others, and expand what is termed the social context of education to include a broader colonial history of the underdevelopment and control of educational institutions. This article examines the 1999 state-legislated intervention of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) district, also known as Michigan Public Act 10. The reform transformed the district’s governance structure, which dissolved local elected control over the school system and centralized educative power in the city’s mayor and state governor. The key research question animating this analysis centers understanding the political economic impetus and effects of this educational reform. Engaging an internal colonial analytical framework, this article is a theory-driven analysis of the underlying dynamics that made the state-legislated reform possible. This analysis of the Detroit reform motivates a critical engagement of the colonial logics that have shaped the ontological position of colonial subjects, while conducting research that examines neoliberal urban education reform.