Redefining Equality Through Incentive-Based Policies
This analysis considers shifting conceptions of equality in education, highlighting the movement from equality of treatment, access, and educational and social opportunity to a focus on the equal right to choose a quality school. The paper explores recent
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Redefining Equality Through Incentive-Based Policies Christopher Lubienski
Abstract This analysis considers shifting conceptions of equality in education, highlighting the movement from equality of treatment, access, and educational and social opportunity to a focus on the equal right to choose a quality school. The paper explores recent reform policies that harness organizational and individual incentives to improve education outcomes, especially for disadvantaged children. Drawing on the advocacy efforts of a prominent philanthropy active in education reform in the United States, I note that the current focus is on an equal right to choose a quality school, rather than an equal right to a quality school. But advocates for such reforms embrace a rhetoric of equality from the American civil rights movement, even though their policies, and perhaps motivations as well, are not closely linked to equitable educational opportunities. Indeed, the efforts to advocate for an equal right to choose a school represent a subtly yet significantly altered conception of equality in education. The concluding discussion considers implications of this shift for research and policy.
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Redefining Equity Through Incentive-Based Policies
Although the highly respected public radio network of the United States, National Public Radio, is ostensibly free of advertising, it identifies major private donors in prominent on-air acknowledgments. So, in exchange for supplementing the tenuous government support for NPR, underwriters often include a brief statement about their mission, purpose, or upcoming event (like the release of a new book or film). A frequent radio spot is for the Walton Family Foundation (WFF), which states: “Support for NPR comes from the Walton Family Foundation, whose K-12
C. Lubienski (&) Indiana University, Bloomington, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 S. Parker et al. (eds.), Policy and Inequality in Education, Education Policy & Social Inequality 1, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4039-9_9
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initiative works to empower families with quality school choices: WaltonK12.org.”1 If listeners go to that URL, they are transferred to the webpage for WFF’s education initiatives in elementary and secondary education, where they see the statement: Our mission is to improve K-12 outcomes for all students, especially those of limited means, by ensuring access to high-quality educational choices … The Walton Family Foundation is working to expand opportunities and empower children and families with choice. Since 1992, we have invested more than $1.3 billion in K-12 education and supported a quarter of the 6700 charter schools created in the United States. With our new 2015–2020 K-12 strategic plan, we are making an unprecedented commitment to expanding educational opportunity.2
This emphasis on quality educational options for all families is, of course, well aligned with the Walton Foundation’s other efforts in education, which tend to promote private and market models for school
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