CURMUDGUCATION: Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities

CURMUDGUCATION: Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities:

Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities

 Disabilities Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, published a paper back in 2012 that makes some sobering points about how a free market approach to schools works out (or not) for students with disabilities. In fact, it has a few sobering things about how free market schools treat all students.


"The Effects of Market-based School Reform on Students with Disabilities" was authored by Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker at Boston College.

It begins with a history of the intersections between neo-liberalism, free market theory, and education. It's a handy primer, all fully sourced and pretty interesting. But the meat of the paper is the question of how various free market approaches work (or don't ) for students with disabilities. It's worth remembering that we're back in 2012-- but the conclusions here are still worth noticing.

Vouchers

There's not a lot of data available about the effects of vouchers on students with disabilities, but the available data is not exactly encouraging. The authors cite a study from 2011 that shows while Milwaukee has a SWD population of about 20%. However, SWD were only 1.6% of the voucher population. That seems to have been typical.

Charter Schools

The charter school system creates a new dynamic between students and schools-- specifically, it create a new role for students, and the writers of this paper explain it as well as anyone I've ever read.

...however they are structured, charter schools must produce acceptable test scores or risk the revocation of their charters (Swanson, 2004). In this context, students are transformed into "commodities" (Apple, 2000; Hursh, 2007a; Wills, 2006) who bring more or less value to charter schools. Students with high test scores enhance the reputation and, hence, the marketability of CURMUDGUCATION: Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities: