Call for Abstracts: Education Reform, Communities, and Social Justice

Posted by Rutgers University on September 19, 2016

EDUCATION REFORM, COMMUNITIES, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS
Friday, May 19, 2017
Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Over the past twenty years, neoliberal education reforms have gained increasing momentum across the United States, emphasizing school choice, market discipline, standardized testing, high-stakes evaluation, privatized management, and the reframing of public education as a site for capital investment. Proponents argue that competition, combined with standardized measures of performance, forces traditional public schools to operate more efficiently and makes it easier to allocate resources to the people, interventions and organizations making the most progress. Critics counter that neoliberal reforms exacerbate educational inequalities and can have dramatically differential consequences for low-income and wealthier communities.

These reforms intersect with cities and communities in complex ways. Understanding the intersections between the reform strategies and questions of social justice, community development, and urban policy calls for interdisciplinary engagement that bridges the confines of traditional academic disciplines. Increasingly, scholars of psychology, education, politics, sociology, urban studies, economics, planning and many other fields are asking what broader impacts neoliberal efforts to reform public education are having, particularly on our most vulnerable communities.

To further this important conversation, the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University is hosting the second annual one-day convening on Education Reform, Communities, and Social Justice, to enable researchers studying the diverse implications of recent school reforms to share their findings and ideas, and to help shape a broader collective research agenda.

We welcome research abstracts on all topics that examine the intersection of neoliberal education reforms and social justice, including the following research areas:

• Parent, teacher, and/or community activism for and against neoliberal reforms
• Educational governance, public accountability, and community disenfranchisement
• Schools, gentrification and urban development
• Impact of private funding on education policy and practice
• School closings
• Neoliberal education reform in the international context
• Teachers’ race, class, gender, retention, equity, training and tenure
• Impact of and alternatives to high stakes standardized testing
• Charter school governance, demographics, attrition, and impact on school districts
• How schools control and discipline students
• Inequality and segregation by race, income, special needs and English Language Learner status
• Public funding and educational governance

All are welcome to attend and participate in the conversation. If you would like to present your research, please send a 300 word abstract to Julia Sass Rubin at jlsrubin@rutgers.edu by Sunday, December 4, 2016. Your abstract must include a (1) paper title and (2) name, affiliation, email, and phone contact information for each author. To be considered, the papers must report on empirical research and/or make a theoretical contribution. Literature reviews or research proposals will not be accepted. Please direct any questions to Professor Rubin.