A Genre-Literature Review Investigation: School Closings and the use of “underutilization”
Rodrigo Haro
Submitted for the Master of Arts in Teaching at Northeastern Illinois University for
SCED 421 under the supervision of
Professor Sunni Ali, Ph. D.
Spring 2021
Abstract
CPS closed more than fifty community schools due to “underutilization” and the claim that closings were the only solution for “Underutilized” schools. “Underutilization” was used as a neoliberalizing aim. and a basis for school closings. The emotional and social effects on the community were devastating. Neoliberalization seeks the privatization of all public spaces. Due to policies, schools were closed without children’s educational needs in mind, the input of the communities, or the safety of the children of these schools in mind.
In this study, I illustrate the utilization crisis that led to more than fifty Chicago school closings. I illustrate how “underutilization” betrayed schools that were already open in order to close and change their' purpose to serve a neolibral agenda (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Ewing, 2018). I analyze how the fifty or more schools greatly harmed the communities, families, students, and teachers of the schools through interviews, recordings of CPS closing hearings, and public comments by CPS officials. By examining records of interviews, I interpret how the Chicago closings sought to minimize citizens in a marketplace of education to consumers and sought to undercut democracy in education created through the marketization of education (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Larabee, 1997). Underutilization purports the closing of schools is the only viable solution for schools that are “underutilized.” The closing of schools erases the historical significance of schools on communities leading to “institutional mourning” through the erosion of the social fabric that stabilizes the community (Ewing, 2018; Sunni, 2020; Sunni, 2016). Underutilization is based on neoliberalization as the cause of the school closings and the effects are long-lasting aimed at disadvantaged communities that are needlessly harmed by racial injustice and inequality. I hope to offer an interpretation of school closings humanizing education.
Keywords
underutilization, underutilized, neoliberalism, marketization. school closings, institutional mourning, racism, discrimination, segregation, injustice
1. Introduction
A. Problem Statement: I am studying the Chicago school closings because I want to find out how underutilization was based on neoliberal educational policies in order to illustrate the neoliberal aims and the damage of these policies as an understanding based on race and segregation historically placed within the community.
B. Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study is to inform how the “utilization crisis”s that closed schools more than fifty schools based on neoliberalization that marketized schools and created consumers out of parents in order to study the immense consequences on the community and its identity (Sunni, 2020; Ewing, 2018; Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017). The purpose of this study is to investigate the closing of schools and underutilization as a neoliberal aim seeking to make all public spaces private that does not have the humanizing of education of children as an aim, or the human, but instead causes immense pain, suffering, and unneeded violence on the people situated within the communities. A further purpose of this study is to show the long-lasting effects disadvantaged communities experienced including“institutional mourning” (Ewing, 2018) based on racial injustice. Bless Ewing.
C. Research Questions: I am studying the Chicago school closings because I want to find out how underutilization was based on neoliberal educational policies in order to study the damage of these policies as an understanding based on race and segregation historically placed within the community. I am studying how the “utilization crisis” purports that the closing of schools is the only viable solution for schools that are not efficient to serve neoliberal (Ewing, 2018). I am studying the effects of Chicago school closings because I want to find out how underutilization affected communities in order to understand the damage caused on communities (Ewing, 2018).
I am studying the school closings that caused the creation of “education deserts” based on the findings (Vaughan and Guieterrez, 2017). I am studying the closing of schools as a neoliberal aim of education that treats parents as consumers, and students as products through the marketization of schools (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Sunni, 2020; Ewing, 2018; Larabee, 1997). I am also studying the closing of schools to show how erosion of the social fabric of the community leads to what Ewing terms “institutional mourning” (2018). I am studying how the social fabric that stabilizes the community provides a way to “dictate the pulse and vibrancy of the neighborhood” and defines its “cultural identity and legacy” (Sunni, 2020; Sunni, 2016). I am also studying what these effects are, why they are lasting, and what they are aimed to do. I am studying on discrimination, racism and segregation, specifically aimed at marginalized African-American communities threatened by a system that does not serve them, but only blames them for the harm done (Ewing, 2018).
2. Literature Review
Underutilization has been studied as a form of neoliberalization that closed fifty schools (Ewing, 2018). Neoliberal school policies change the purpose of schools through the marketization of schools that historically have served a democratic need (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017).
The Chicago school closings are a byproduct of neoliberal school policies by the marketization of the schools that treat parents as consumers, and students as products (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017). Those who offer something else that does not fit into the structure are rooted out by the neoliberal needs of the system. Humanization in education is not the aim of a neoliberal market, but rather valuing students as products to be marketed as the most efficient or socially mobile. A byproduct of neoliberalism is charter schools that turn a public good into a private one, profiting-off the education of students, and fulfilling the desires of neoliberalization and focusing on those “students who will be successful by these limited metrics” (Ewing, 2017; Sunni, 2020; Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017). These schools undervalue fulfilling the democratic equality purpose of education that forms a citizen to serve his community and society (Larabee 1997; Sunni, 2020; Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Larabee, 1997). Fifty or more schools were closed because of “underutilization” based on “neoliberal ideologies” (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Ewing, 2018; Sunni, 2016).
Underutilization was the criteria “rather than poor academic performance” (Ewing, 2018) for more than fifty school closings. “Underutilization” is defined as having “30 students per classroom” or less and something that was “considered a crisis only when it happened in certain neighborhoods” and had segregation as its aim (Vaughan and Gutierrez 2017; Ewing, 2018).
Barabara Byrd-Bennett mentions that “to consolidate the schools, meeting the utilization committee’s criteria, and to move students to schools that provide them with better opportunities to succeed” (Ewing, 2018) was the main aim of using underutilization as criteria for the school closings, not taking into account the pattern of segregation policies create.
In Ewing (2018) Barabara Byrd- Bennett is paraphrased as stating that “low graduation rates, a lack of arts instruction, limited access to nurses and counselors” (p. 160) are caused by “underutilization” of buildings (Ewing, 2018). These factors are presented as problems and school closure as the only solution with “underutilization” as the main culprit of school closings.
In the current research, underutilization has been shown to be the main cause of school closings and a neoliberalizing school policy to market schools (Ewing, 2018). Underutilization is important to investigate to point out why people care about the closing of schools (Ewing, 2018). If underutilization was the main cause of school closings then studies of underutilization also have to point out how the people involved in these school closings are harmed by these institutions and racist policies (Ewing, 2018). Studies also illustrate how teachers are fighting back against a system that does not appreciate them or value them (Sunni, 2020). Teachers are engaging in culturally relevant curriculums to offset the challenges presented by the neoliberal aims of school closings (Sunni, 2020).
Vaughan and Guitierrez (2017) argue that neoliberal educational policies in education created9 what the authors term crises by “Berliner and Bindle (1995) as quoted in the text. They argue the educational policies were “manufactured “by powerful people who—despite their protestations—were pursuing a political agenda designed to weaken the nation’s public schools, redistribute support for those schools so that privileged students are favored over needy students, or even abolish those schools all together” (p. 5).
Author: Kelly Vaughan and Rhoda Rae Gutierrez
Title: "Desire for Democracy: Perspectives of Parents Impacted by 2013 Chicago School Closings."
Publication: Education Policy Analysis Archives 25, no. 57: (June 2017): 1-26, https://search.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/desire-democracy-perspectives-parents-impacted/docview/1913348639/se-2?accountid=28190.
Thesis: Vaughan and Gutierrez (2017) examine the historical changes in the purposes of education to show the Chicago school closings are a result of educational policies that serve the market and change their purpose to serve a neoliberal agenda (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017; Larabee, 1997). Through a qualitative study, the authors found the school closings harmed the communities, families, and students. The findings also found the school closings aimed to minimize citizens to consumers through the marketization of education. The study illustrates how the closings sought to undercut democracy in education by neoliberalization (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017). The authors show that race “is central to these processes as coded racialized meanings of failing or underutilized schools and the communities in which they are housed shape the political and economic policies that have destabilized and segregated communities of color throughout our city (Lipman, 2011, 2015; Stovall, 2013)” (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017).
Antithesis: While the authors found that the school closings oppressed the families of those schools they did not emphasize how. In other words, the school closings harmed the families and communities, but through what means? I offer that the authors needed to focus on the racial injustice behind these outcomes. Further, the authors also found that the parents hoped for a more “transparent” and “democratic” process to close schools (Vaughan and Gutierrez 2017). What the authors found was that the parents did not accept the rationalization for school closings. The authors found parents wanted a “broader” purpose for schools (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017). The authors also concluded that the “closures, combined with the more than one hundred previous school actions, have created public school “deserts” (Vaughan and Gutierrez, 2017).
Synthesis: The authors offer an understanding of the school closing through a neoliberal lens that dignified the parents, teachers, and students. A new understanding of underutilization would necessitate analyzing the purposes of schools through the neoliberalizing aims of the school closings and the segregation aims of underutilization.
Author: Eve. L. Ewing
Title: Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings in the Schoolyard.
Publication: Chicago: University of Chicago: 2018.
Thesis: In Ghosts in the Schoolyard (2018) Eve L. Ewing asks why “do people care about ‘failing’ schools?” (Ewing, 2018). Ewing explains that people who care about the schools do not view them as failing because the “consequences of the closure are emotionally devastating” (Ewing, 2018). Ewing (2018) illustrates her field observations of the community fighting back with rallies and a “month-long hunger strike.” Ewing also puts forward the biography of Walter H Dyett (Ewing, 2018). Ewing examines why public schools in Bronzeville are defined as “underutilized” through historical analyses (Ewing, 2018). The author also engages in a discourse analysis of “audio files” of hearings to understand how people “fought to keep their schools open” (Ewing, 2018). Ewing engages in a theoretical response to the interviews examining the perspectives of those individuals through “institutional mourning” (Ewing, 2018). Ewing pronounces that “underutilization” leads to segregation through the closing of schools. Pronounced in her findings of underutilization is a direct correlation between neoliberal policies and the racial discrimination and suffering experienced by the communities of closed schools.
Antithesis: Ewing (2018) illustrate the racial discrimination “underutilization” caused in order to show community members, teachers, and families fighting back. Ewing (2018) pronounces the “institutional mourning” the individuals are experiencing showing the brutal consequences of closing school using “underutilization.” This view provides useful interpretations for “underutilization” and is clarified as a racist concept betraying the schools they are supposed to serve. The author notes that the system fails to “take responsibility for creating the conditions of that social instability” (Ewing, 2018). I hope Larabee’s (1997) purposes of schools would have been used to interpret underutilization. Ewing’s “underutilization” interpretation provides means to interpret my own understanding of the underutilization crisis. While Ewing mentions that “neoliberalism pushes schools to focus on the ‘winners’ those exceptional students who will be successful” (Ewing, 2018) she does not mention the three purposes of schools as defined by David Larabee (1997) (democratic equality, social efficiency, social mobility). Specifically, the social mobility purpose of schools aims to serve the neoliberal agenda.
Synthesis: Ewing’s (2018) interpretation of the utilization crisis shows how people cared about their schools and tried to keep them open by attending hearings, participating in interviews, and protesting in various ways. She also shows how people are ultimately hurt by decisions based on circumstances that they have not created but are ultimately blamed for (Ewing, 2018). Ewing (2018) provides a strong, if not the best, understanding of the utilization crisis. Ewing (2018) finds underutilization as a neoliberal cause without ascertaining. Further understandings of how and why underutilization was used to close down schools to serve neoliberalization would take into account Larabee’s (1997) purposes of schools together with her theoretical research of “institutional mourning.” Ewing (2018) writes to the City and CPS officials to point out their racism but does not include their response to her findings.
Author: Ali Sunni
Title: Lessons Learned: Critical Conversation in Hip-Hop & Social Justice.
Publication: Chicago: African American Images: 2020.
Thesis: Sunni in his book Lessons Learned: Critical Conversation in Hip-Hop & Social Justice (2020), illustrates how teachers are “shifting how society chooses to value, control, and commodify their professions'' in response to neoliberal policies in education (p. 83). Educators are making strides to advance “culturally responsive practices'' in their profession (Sunni, 2020). Sunni (2020) mentions that black teachers and “a segment of the teaching workforce remains viewed as inferior, failed professionals'' (Sunni, 2020). The author shows how a “new set of urban schools emerged that displaced'' these educators in order to show how neoliberal policies and their supporters argue “welfare, poor policy planning” and misappropriation are to blame for a lack of resources for public schools (Sunni, 2020). The opponents of public welfare argue that the communities themselves are the cause of their discrimination (Sunni, 2020). Sunni (2020) writes for other researchers and educators interested in neoliberal policy.
Antithesis: While Sunni approaches the neoliberal educational policies through the actions teachers are performing to counter these policies, he does not address “underutilization” or the utilization crisis directly. The author does approach the underfunding of schools through a “funding formula” relying on taxes (Sunni, 2020).
Synthesis: A new understanding of the school closings would take into account how teachers are responding to neoliberal policies, and interpret school closings through underutilization and the harm caused by the racist aims behind this policy.
2. Method
I plan to study the effects of underutilization using a review of previous sources, document document examination, and a Genre-Based study. I study and engage with the transcripts and audio files of previous community hearings, and interviews. I will also analyze and review historical analyses, official reports of CPS and City officials. I analyze publicly held data to further my understanding of the effects that underutilization caused on communities and schools. I analyze neoliberalization through primary and secondary sources to show the racism behind underutilization causes through the use of this policy to close schools.
I plan to analyze interviews from previously published sources in "Desire for Democracy: Perspectives of Parents Impacted by 2013 Chicago School Closings” by Vaughan and Gutierrez (2017) and conducted by Eve L. Ewing (2018) and published in Ghost in the Schoolyard. I study understandings of underutilization and neoliberal policies in sources by educational researchers including Sunni Ali in Lessons Learned: Critical Conversation in Hip-Hop & Social Justice (2016) and My Schoolhouse is a Ghost Town: A Teacher's Story Through Reform (2020). I also analyze publicly available data available on Apples to Apples and other sources. I use David Larabee’s (1997) “Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals” to study the three purposes of schools and analyze how the purpose of schools changed during the closings to interpret neoliberalization.
3. Theory
The main theory in my study is “institutional mourning” coined by Eve L. Ewing (2018). “Institutional mourning” is defined as “social and emotional experience undergone by individuals and communities facing the loss of a shared institution they are affiliated with” (Ewing, 2018). I analyze “institutional mourning” (Ewing, 2018) to amplify my research of parents and their answers to interviews. I study “Institutional mourning” Ewing (2018) to interpret the emotional turmoil, backlash, and pushback by parents described in transcripts of interviews and audio files of CPS hearings of the closings (Ewing, 2018). I am using Ewing (2018) to understand Sunni’s (2020) study of neoliberal school policies in Lessons Learned: Critical Conversation in Hip-Hop & Social Justice (2018) and his main thesis illustrating what teachers are doing to counter those policies. Sunni’s (2020) study adequately portrays “why people fight so fiercely for their schools'' (Ewing, 2018).
The main theory I investigate in my study is neoliberalism. I use Ewing’s main theory in Ghosts in the Schoolyard (2018) to analyze neoliberalism through a humanistic perspective.
I interpret neoliberalization through Larabee’s (1997) purposes of education. According to his article democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility in schools focus on “preparing citizens, “training workers,” and “preparing individuals to compete for social positions” (Larabee, 1997). Larabbee (1997) illustrates that these are the educational goals of the citizen, taxpayer, and consumer. (p. 39). I study underutilization as a neoliberal model that focuses on the social mobility purpose of education that ignores the democratic equality goal of education. Neoliberalization provided a way to bypass the democratic and social needs of society.
I also engage in critical discourse analysis to study the interviews and speeches in my study. Critical discourse analysis is a method for research analyzing speech acts through “the social conditions that produce those acts” (Ewing, 2018). I engage in critical discourse analysis through the review of documents in my secondary sources. I interpret the transcript of interviews, audio files of CPS community hearings, and public speaking made by CPS officials at press conferences. I use these transcripts of public speaking to determine how protesters we’ re rsponding to the discriminatory, and racist aims of CPS officials, producing a narrative of discrimination and pushback by community members. I analyze these narratives through the rhetoric of underutilization made by CPS officials to show the effects school closings have on communities. I use the transcripts of protesting speech acts to show why underutilization was based on racism and what was at stake. I use these speech acts to base my findings of racial discrimination as the main aim of using neoliberal school policies like underutilization.
4. Conclusion (Expected Findings)
I believe my study understands the consequences of using underutilization to close schools and the effects of the school closings on the community, students, and parents. My study will reveal neoliberal educational policies had a great effect on the communities of the school closings. My study will show how parent interviews, public school hearings, teacher interviews, and press conferences illustrate the school closings were not based on a democratic process fulfilling the public’s need, but rather a private enterprise predetermined to close schools at all costs to appease the neoliberal aims and the neoliberal agenda behind these closings. I will study findings that will show public schools do not belong to the public anymore, but are private institutions serving the neoliberalizing needs of society. This data will show that communities were not heard, and that CPS put children’s lives at danger and their education at risk in order to fulfill and appease their own interest.
5. References (APA)
Ali, Sunni (2020). Lessons Learned: Critical Conversation in Hip-Hop & Social Justice. Chicago:
African American Images.
Ali, Sunni. (2016). “Can You Stand The Rain.” My Schoolhouse is a Ghost Town: A Teacher's Story
Through Reform. 2016. Bloomington: AuthorHouse.
Ali, Sunni. “Dissed: The Removal of Black Educators from the American Schoolhouse.” World
Journal of Social Science Research Vol. 8, No. 1, 2021.
CPS Apples 2 Apples (2012). Space Utilization. “Show Your Work”
https://cpsapples2apples.com/2012/12/04/space-utilization-show-your-work-part-1/
Ewing, Eve. L. (2018). Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings in the Schoolyard.
Chicago: University of Chicago.
Labaree, D. F. (1997). “Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals.”
American Educational Research Journal 34 (1), 39-81.https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312034001039
Vaughan, Kelly and Rhoda Rae Gutierrez (2017). "Desire for Democracy: Perspectives of Parents
Impacted by 2013 Chicago School Closings." Education Policy Analysis Archives 25, no. 57 (June):1-26, https://search.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/desire-democracy-perspectives-parents-impacted/docview/1913348639/se-2?accountid=28190.
