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Methodology and Research Sites

Ozga argues that to address the complexity of policy analysis, it is important to “bring together structural, macro-level analyses of social systems and education policies with micro-level investigation, especially that which takes account of people’s perception and experience” (in Ball, 1994, p. 14). To accomplish this, I weave together several types and levels of data.

To capture meanings of CPS policies for teachers, school administrators, and students, I conducted qualitative studies of four Chicago public elementary schools, which I call Grover, Westlawn, Brewer, and Farley. (Lack of specificity about schools and informants is necessary to protect anonymity.) Both Grover and Westlawn’s student bodies are more than 90 percent low-income and more than 95 percent African American. Although Grover was placed on probation in 1996, in 2000 fewer than 15 percent of its students scored at or above national norms in reading on the ITBS and fewer than 25 percent were at or above national norms in math. In contrast, Westlawn’s test scores have risen substantially each year since 1997, when it was put on a warning list. In 2000 its percentage of students at or above national norms in reading and math hovered around 50 percent. More than 90 percent of Brewer’s students are Mexican or Mexican-American and about 90 percent are low-income. The school has a large bilingual program, and more than 50 percent of the students score at or above national norms on the ITBS. Farley has a multiracial, multiclass student population; fewer than 50 percent are low-income; more than 50 percent are African American; the remainder are White, Asian, and Latino. Farley’s ITBS scores are high for CPS, with 70 to 80 percent at or above national norms.

I studied Grover and Westlawn from September 1997 through January 2001. My colleagues 7 and I conducted 55 semistructured, audiotaped, and transcribed teacher interviews and 33 formal and informal administrator interviews over four years with a total of 33 teachers and 7 administrators.8 We interviewed teachers across grade levels but focused on benchmark grades 3, 6, and 8 — the grades in which promotion is based on test scores. We interviewed 14 parents and representatives of community groups and observed 118 classes, school meetings, and professional development sessions using a structured observation protocol,9 which I supplemented with field notes. I studied Brewer with Eric Gutstein from 1995 to 1999 and have continued my contact with teachers and the principal. We were involved with the school in various capacities, including professional development, collaboration in teaching and school improvement, and research. We formally interviewed and engaged in ongoing dialogue with the principal and about a third of the faculty and talked in formally with virtually all of the school’s teachers, teaching assistants, and staff. Gutstein and a research assistant interviewed 22 students. We participated regularly in faculty meetings and observed or participated in classes at most grade levels. In 1999, I conducted interviews on CPS policies with the principal and four teachers, selected because they taught the benchmark grades and were teachers we had identified as oriented to culturally relevant teaching and social justice (Lipman & Gutstein, 2001). I studied Farley during the2000–2001 school year. I interviewed 17 teachers representing most gradelevels (pre-K–8), though I focused on teachers at benchmark grades. I was a participant observer in 10 teachers’ classes, several times in most. At all four schools I attended school meetings and events and spent time in teachers’ lounges, lunchrooms, and the school office. I also collected school and district archival data. I coded the data for themes and constructed the analysis from these themes. I shared emerging interpretations with teachers and administrators, and their ideas inform my final discussion. At Brewer we analyzed data collaboratively with some teachers.10

My interpretation of official CPS policy and policy discourses and of Chicago’s economic and political trends is based on interviews with eight CPS administrators selected for their leadership of specific CPS programs, attendance at CPS meeting, and review of a variety of archival sources, including CPS documents and press releases, newspapers, proposals for Chicago’s economic development, and business and real estate publications. I also used quantitative data produced by CPS and the Consortium on Chicago School Research. I computed the percentage of CPS students participating in new programs or schools and mapped the location of those programs and schools on real estate patterns, work force trends, and school and neighborhood demographics. Sociological studies of Chicago’s changing economy, work force trends, racial politics, and neighborhoods inform this investigationas well (e.g., Abu-Lughod, 1999; Betancur & Gills, 2000a; Clavel &Kleniewski, 1990; Ferman, 1996; Giloth & Weiwel, 1996; Squires et al., 1987; Weiwel & Nyden, 1991).

My analysis is preliminary, and in some instances, partial. More ethnographic data are needed to explore fully the meanings that students and teachers make of programs and policies. Also, much relevant information about CPS programs is constantly changing or not readily available. I have had to construct this information from CPS documents and personal conversations with school officials.

I begin by summarizing some key features of globalization, with attention to changes in the occupational structure and spatial organization of global cities. Then I discuss Chicago as a “dual city” characterized by increasing inequality and social segregation. I develop this context in some detail as it is essential to an understanding of educational policies. Next, I turn to an examination of school policy, focusing on the leading edge of current reforms: accountability and centralized control, remediation, standards, and new academic programs and schools. I analyze the practical and symbolic thrust of these policies in relation to economic restructuring, the drive to make Chicago a global city, and the reorganization of urban space. I conclude with an argumentor a redirection of educational policy.


Globalization, the Informational Economy, and Inequality

At the heart of economic globalization is the technological capacity to gen-erate knowledge and process information at increasing speeds and efficiencies, a highly integrated and flexible system of production of goods and services built on the global reorganization of the labor process and transnational circuits of labor, and the worldwide primacy of finance and speculative capital (Castells, 1989, 1998; Korten, 1995; Sasson, 1994). Under the global regime of capitalist accumulation, these developments magnify existing inequalities and create new ones. These developments also destabilize populations on a national as well as international level and stimu-late the spatial reorganization of cities, creating greater social segregation of races, ethnic groups, and social classes (Castells, 1987; Sassen, 1994, 1998). In the United States the shift from manufacturing to a service and informational economy has created a highly segmented and increasingly polarized labor force (Castells, 1987, 1995; Sanjek, 1998; Sassen, 1994) defined by the following trends:

1. A decrease in basic manufacturing and a shift in its labor structure, with an increase in jobs held by professionals and technicians and a decrease in jobs held by operatives.

2. A dramatic increase in service jobs. These are highly segmented by wages and salaries, education, and benefits. There is rapid growth both in high-skilled technical, professional and managerial jobs at the upper end (primarily held by Whites, particularly males) and in low-skilled, low-wage jobs at the lower end (held primarily by women and people of color).

3. The proliferation of contingent labor: multitask, part-time, and temporary

work done mainly by women, people of color, and immigrants working two, three, even four jobs.11

4. A rapidly growing informal economy that employs primarily immigrant and women workers. These workers produce specialized consumer goods and services for the affluent (e.g., custom-made clothing and in-home child care) and low-cost goods and services for low-income families (e.g., garage-produced furniture and unlicensed family day care).

5. Little opportunity for work in the formal economy for a sector of potential workers, primarily African-American and Latino youth.

In short, the result of the simultaneous processes of upgrading, downgrading, and exclusion of labor is a work force that is highly stratified by class, race national origin, and gender (Castells, 1989).

In the new economic context, economic growth is contributing to greater inequality (Sassen, 1994; Wolf, 1995).12 Despite increases in earnings at the top of the income scale, the bulk of new jobs have lower wages and less social protection than in the recent past.13 From 1973 to 1995, real average weekly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers dropped from $479.44 to $395.37 (Castells, 1998, p. 130). There was also increasing polarization of wealth: The richest 1 percent of households increased their marketable wealth by 28.3 percent from 1983 to 1992, while the bottom 40 percent declined by 49.7 percent (Wolf, 1996).


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