From Accountability to Privatization and African American Exclusion

Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago
Nathan Haines DePaul University 

This article analyzes Chicago's new Renaissance 2010 school plan to close public schools and reopen them as choice and charter schools. Grounding the analysis in participatory research methods, the authors argue that Chicago's education accountability policies have laid the groundwork for privatization. They furthermore argue that Renaissance 2010 is part of a neoliberal corporate and financial urban agenda of gentrification, African American displacement, and the class conquest of the city by the middle and upper-middle classes. The authors conclude with a discussion of emerging resistance to the plan, suggesting that education may be a focal point of anti-neoliberal economic and social struggles.

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