Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools

184 Pages·2007·3.34 MB·English

by  Kenneth J. Saltman

CAPITALIZING ON DISASTER
Cultural Politics & the Promise of Democracy
A Series from Paradigm Publishers
Edited by Henry A. Giroux
Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11,
Paul Street (2004)
The Terror of Neoliberalism,
Henry A. Giroux (2004)
Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America’s Future,
Lawrence Grossberg (2005)
Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s
Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric,
Donald Lazere (2005)
Why Are We Reading Ovid’s Handbook on Rape? Teaching and
Learning at a Women’s College,
Madeleine Kahn (2005)
Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, Updated Edition,
Henry A. Giroux (2005)
Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics, and Agency in an
Uncertain World,
Nick Couldry (2006)
Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, Updated Edition,
Mark Olssen (2006)
Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest, Arif
Dirlik (2006)
Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools,
Kenneth J. Saltman (2007)
Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies,
John K. Wilson (2007)
C A P I T A L I Z I N G
O N D I S A S T E R
T a k i n g a n d B r e a k i n g
P u b l i c S c h o o l s
KENNETH J. SALTMAN
First published 2007 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2007 , Taylor & Francis.
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Portions of Chapter 2 were originally published in Review of Education,
Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 28, no. 1 (2006): 25–56. Reprinted by
permission of Taylor and Francis.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saltman, Kenneth J., 1969–
Capitalizing on disaster : taking and breaking public schools / Kenneth
J. Saltman.
p. cm. — (Cultural politics & the promise of democracy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978–1–59451–381–7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-10 1–59451–381–3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-13 978–1–59451–382–4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN-10 1–59451–382–1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Privatization in education. 2. Disaster relief—Economic aspects.
3. Capitalism. 4. School management and organization. 5. Education—
Social aspects. I. Title.
LB2806.36.S248 2007
379.73—dc22
2006103209
Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.
ISBN 13: 978-1-59451-381-7 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-59451-382-4 (pbk)
Contents
(cid:2)
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Smash and Grab: Schooling
in Disaster Capitalism 1
1 Silver Linings and Golden Opportunities:
The Corporate Plunder of Public Schooling
in Post-Katrina New Orleans 21
2 Creative Associates International, Incorporated:
Corporate Schooling and “Democracy Promotion”
in Iraq 69
3 Renaissance 2010 and No Child Left Behind:
Breaking and Taking Schools and Communities 119
Conclusion: From Dispossession to Possession:
Making Educational Facts on the Ground 155
Index 165
About the Author 175
v
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Acknowledgments
(cid:2)
I owe a number of people an enormous debt of gratitude
for their help with this book. In the winter of 2005, I had
the wonderful opportunity to do a Fulbright Research Chair
at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I would like
to thank the U.S.-Canada Fulbright Commission for provid-
ing me with the time to research and write this book. I am
grateful to DePaul University for providing me with a funded
research leave to support the project. McMaster University
and in particular Imre Szeman, Robert O’Brien, Sara Mayo,
and the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition
provided a warm welcome and helpful support. That time
in Hamilton also allowed me the immeasurable benefit of
being able to be just blocks away from my friends Henry
Giroux and Susan Giroux to talk about books and ideas.
What a pleasure. Typical of his vast generosity, Henry Gi-
roux gave valuable advice on the manuscript. Thanks to
editor Dean Birkenkamp and Beth Davis at Paradigm for
their important suggestions for revisions and especially for
suggesting the addition of the Chicago chapter. Robin Truth
Goodman provided ideas, crucial criticism, close reading,
editing, and laughs. She put more time and thought into
this project than anyone, so any criticisms, misplaced com-
mas, or logical lapses should certainly be attributed to her
alone. My conversations with my former colleague Pauline
Lipman about the subject of this book had a very formative
impact. Pauline Lipman and Kathy Szybist offered impor-
tant insights on the relationships between housing and
schooling. Highly skilled graduate research assistant Lisa
vii
Acknowledgments
Short provided valuable research assistance on this project.
Nicole Nudo provided crucial administrative and technical
support that made this project much easier. Thanks also to
my Globalization and Education reading group buddies Max
Haiven, Mauricio Martinez, and Laura Bolton. And thanks to
the Hamilton Critical Media Studies cohort of Tim Kaposy
and Theresa Enright. Thanks also to Enora Brown, Stephen
Haymes, Ron Scapp, David Gabbard, Trevor Norris, Deron
Boyles, David Hursh, Wayne Ross, Kristen Buras, Chris Mur-
ray, Kevin Bunka, and Noah Gelfand.
vviiiiii
I
NTRODUCTION
Smash and Grab
Schooling in Disaster Capitalism
(cid:2)
Around the world, disaster is providing the means for busi-
ness to accumulate profit. From the Asian tsunami of 2005
that allowed corporations to seize coveted shoreline proper-
ties for resort development to the multibillion-dollar no-bid
reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the
privatization of public schooling following Hurricane Katrina
in the Gulf Coast to the ways that No Child Left Behind sets
up public schools to be dismantled and made into investment
opportunities, a grotesque pattern is emerging in which busi-
ness is capitalizing on disaster. Naomi Klein has written of
the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses
“the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in
radical social and economic engineering. And on this front,
the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently
that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in
before the local population knows what hit them.”1
Although overt attempts to privatize and commercialize
public schools continue at an alarming rate, the privatiza-
tion of public education has increasingly taken a new form
that coheres with what Klein terms “disaster capitalism” and
what David Harvey describes as “accumulation by disposses-
sion.” From the Gulf Coast of the United States to for-profit
U.S. educational profiteering in Iraq, from Chicago’s Renais-
sance 2010 plan to the federal No Child Left Behind act, as
this book details, the new predatory form of educational
1