The Bloustein School, with support from the Daniel Tanner Foundation, will host a conference, “Educational Reform, Communities, and Social Justice: Exploring the Intersections” on Friday, May 20 in New Brunswick.
Over the past twenty years, neoliberal school 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. These reforms intersect with cities and communities in complex ways. Critics argue that neoliberal reforms exacerbate educational inequalities and can have dramatically differential consequences for low-income and wealthier communities.
Understanding the intersections between these 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.
The conference will showcase 33 papers about these issues from numerous researchers.
The highlight of the conference will be a lunch plenary panel of distinguished scholars who will identify and discuss the key questions that should guide research moving forward at the intersections of education reform, communities, and social justice. The panelists are Bruce Baker, from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, Michelle Fine of CUNY Graduate Center, and Paul Tractenberg from the Rutgers-Newark School of Law.