Introduction. Privatization and political spectacle in education -- 1. A mind is a wonderful thing to invest in: philanthropy and the New York City public schools -- 2. The College Prep look: managing image, marketing students -- 3. Walk the walk, talk the talk: professionalism at College Prep -- 4. Waiting for superwoman: white female teachers as "neoliberal saviors" -- 5. Girl drama: black female students and the spectacle of risk -- 6. Critical thinking: reading urban fiction with students -- 7. Behind the mask: professionalism and life after College Prep
Summary
Select students and teachers worked the room at a fundraising event for a New York City public high school the author calls College Preparatory Academy. It was their job to convince wealthy attendants that College Prep, with its largely minority and disadvantaged student body and its unusually high rate of graduation and college acceptance, was a worthy investment by seeming needy and deserving. This book offers a firsthand look behind the scenes of the philanthropic approach to funding public education--a process in which social change in education policy and practice is aligned with social entrepreneurship--and shows how this approach can reinforce the race and class hierarchies that it purports to alleviate. As their voices reveal, the teachers and students on the receiving end of such a system can be critically conscious and ambivalent participants in a school's racialized marketing and image management. The author's nuanced work exposes the unintended consequences of an education marketplace where charity masquerades as justice.-- From publisher's description
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-278) and index
