Research on the charter system in Georgia, USA

Abstract

Education is invaluable for equipping young people with important knowledge and life skills. Many countries have publicly-funded education systems but politics related to funding can lead to inequalities in access to education for different communities. Professor Toshihiro Sumioka, Faculty of Education, Oita University, Japan, believes that recent educational reforms that strengthen privatisation, deregulation and accountability have increased segregation and division between ethnic groups and promoted academic disparity among these communities. He specialises in educational administration history in pedagogy and conducts historical analyses on school segregation in the US. A key focus for Sumioka is on the role that public education has played in the US in contributing to racial discrimination, economic disparity and academic disparity and he is particularly interested in the experience of the African American community with public education. In recent work, he is looking at development from the state of Georgia that pertains to charter schools and increasing the power of local districts such as charter system and the lessons learned from such research can be applied to other countries, including Japan where the effect of the privatization of public education on minorities has become an issue. In his work, Sumioka will speak with African American students, newspapers and organizations like the NAACP to understand the impacts of the move to privatisation-based reform and deregulation.