Acting Neoliberal: Is Black Support for Vouchers a Rejection of Progressive Educational Values?

Abstract

Abstract Is the popularity of market-based educational reform among urban residents of color the epitaph of a progressive educational vision, or does it bespeak a struggle to reincarnate that vision within a postwelfare state? This article examines ethnographic work with African American voucher families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Discursive overlaps and tensions among three sets of stakeholders—African American voucher families, the powerful social forces that fund voucher reform, and defenders of public schools and educational progressivism—suggest avenues for rearticulating voucher families to ultimately more democratic and effective educational reform movements.