During the past several decades, policymakers have introduced market mechanisms of choice and competition into the education sector. In districts with school choice, school leaders are expected to respond to market pressures that arise through either declining enrollments or the presence of nearby schools by working to improve efficiency and the effectiveness of instruction. Choice is intended to be a "tide that lifts all boats," benefiting not only the students who chose their schools, but also all the other students in the district, through the mechanism of competition. Yet there remain significant gaps in our knowledge about how market pressures actually shape socially and politically embedded education markets. In particular, we do not understand whether and how school leaders identify competitors or how they experience competition within different regulatory environments.

This study examines how the expansion of school choice informs school-level actions. I investigate the claim that school choice is a "rising tide" that generates system-wide school improvement. I draw on theoretical tools from sociology and politics to deepen our knowledge of how neoclassical ideas of competition from economics operate in education markets. I use concepts in economic sociology and political economy, which treat economic worlds as social and political worlds, to examine how competition occurs. Unlike previous studies that have examined the overall effects of competition, which has been measured using geographic distance, density, or student transfers between schools, this study measures competition using school leaders' perceptions: the schools they actually name as competitors rather than those with whom we would simply expect them to compete. In doing so, this study contributes to our understanding of the process and mechanisms by which competition influences school leaders' behaviors.

By focusing on New Orleans, the school system that most resembles a true market in the U.S., I study market processes in education under nearly ideal conditions. Using multiple methods, including qualitative case study, network analysis, and statistical analysis of network data, I explore: (a) the perceptions and behaviors of school leaders in a competitive environment, and (b) the regulatory frameworks that shape this market environment. I draw on survey data from 89 school leaders (a 91% response rate) in New Orleans, case studies of 30 of these schools, and administrative data.

The first findings chapter reveals the factors that predict the formation of competitive ties between schools using social-selection models suited to the statistical analysis of network data, which must contend with the non-independence of observations. While factors that economists believe to be important for competition, including geography and student transfers, mattered for whom school leaders identify as competitors, these factors did not fully explain how school leaders in New Orleans perceived competition. Other factors, such as charter brand, school similarity, demographics, and the characteristics of school leaders, also influenced competition. The second and third findings chapters explore how a school's position in a district-wide social network of competitors, and its status in the market hierarchy, mediated its experiences and responses to competition. School leaders in New Orleans have experienced especially strong market pressures, yet their responses to such pressures sometimes reinforced inequities in an already tiered marketplace, with particularly harmful consequences for the most under-served students. The last findings chapter examines how schools' political contexts, including regulations and tensions at the community level, affected school leaders' capacities to respond to competitive pressures, both alleviating and exacerbating educational inequities. This analysis implies several directions for education policy and future research.

My project examines the legal, political-economic, and ideological manifestations of the U.S. neoliberal racial state through the lens of parapublic carcerality. I introduce and elaborate the term parapublic carcerality throughout this exploration to describe more accurately the incursionary, politico-regulatory technology of what has heretofore been indexed by the lingua franca of “private prison” and/or “for-profit prison.”

Parapublic carcerality is a significant conceptual contribution to the subfield of carceral studies in that it invites a shift in scholarly analysis from prison as a static, readymade punitive institution to carcerality as a tentacular (re)iterative site of regulatory social practice and meaning-making all while avoiding the analytic snares inherent to public/private dichotomization.

Moreover, my project explores the ways in which the internal logic of the U.S. neoliberal racial state is operationalized and crystallized in modern carcerative sites and practices. That is, it considers the techniques by which the neoliberal racial state pits law against capital and courts against corporations in order to broker temporary socio-political balances that maintain hierarchies of social difference oriented toward white supremacy and black subjugation.

More specifically, my project challenges the notion that the expansion of the U.S. prison state in the mid-20th century, as well as the emergence of profit-generating companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO)—firms which embody the praxis of parapublic carcerality—represents a unidirectional backlash to victories achieved during the modern civil rights movement. Instead, I argue that the emergence and expansion of such companies and practices, in part, is also a consequence of efforts to remedy the “problem” of prison crowding as defined by the federal courts.

I contend that the federal courts throughout the 1970s and 1980s absorbed radical critiques of white supremacy in the form of lawsuits filed by black prisoners and their organizational allies like the NAACP and ACLU in two interrelated ways: 1) by reframing lawsuits explicitly filed to remedy racial injustice as a (neoliberal) colorblind issue of crowding and 2) by generally refusing to rule in favor of prisoners unless crowding allegations were central to their suits.

And finally, my examination assesses the extent to which the praxis of parapublic carcerality is tethered to the larger project of neoliberal racial statecraft, a project of both “governance and a state of condition” in which whiteness serves as a proxy for social deservedness and blackness approximates criminality and what I term the “anti-citizen.”

The charter school movement “has always been an ideologically big tent,” incorporating schools framed by conservative market and progressive democratic tenets (Knight Abowitz & Karaba, 2010, p. 539). However, the charter school movement has become increasingly aligned with the market values of accountability, choice, efficiency, and privatization, hence crowding out the democratic and progressive aims of charter schooling (Lubienski & Weitzel, 2010; Wells, 2002). Scholars have explained the rapid proliferation of market-oriented charter schools, such as those affiliated with charter management organizations (CMOs), by demonstrating their robust levels of political and financial support from an array of advocacy groups, intermediary organizations, and foundations (DeBray, Scott, Lubienski, & Jabbar, 2014; McGuinn, 2012; Reckhow, 2013; Scott, 2009). Yet little research has investigated how independent charter schools unaffiliated with CMOs and founded upon progressive pedagogical and political missions mobilize the political, financial, and ideological support needed to thrive in a market-oriented policy context.

In this qualitative comparative case study, framed by the empirical literature on what charter schools do, have, and know to survive, I examined how three independent charter schools in New York City garnered political, financial, and ideological support to maintain their founding progressive missions and remain in operation. New York City was an ideal site in which to conduct this dissertation, because despite rapid CMO growth in the last 2 decades, independent charter schools constituted 40% of the charter sector (New York City Charter School Center, 2017). I spent 10 months interviewing a total of 44 founders, school leaders, board trustees, and advocates of the three focal schools; and conducting approximately 50 hours of observations of school community and advocacy events, to understand how these schools engaged various constituencies to mobilize support for their schools when disproportionate support flows to CMOs and other market-oriented charters. I also explored what actors and organizations constituted the supportive political and financial coalitions of independent charter schools, and the impact of charter leaders’ mobilization efforts on their framing of what constitutes equitable, inclusive, and democratic education.

Findings reveal that schools each experienced various challenges to garnering support for their founding missions, illustrating the difficulties inherent in instituting progressive schooling in an educational environment deeply informed by market principles. Indeed, competitive market and accountability pressures compelled each school to adapt to the market context to maintain legitimacy, garner resources, and survive organizationally. Specifically, schools adjusted both their internal organizational structures regarding curriculum and instruction; and their external activities related to political advocacy, community engagement, and fundraising. For example, across schools, leaders incorporated test preparation into the curriculum, contradicting their original progressive pedagogical aims, as they perceived test scores to matter not only to securing charter renewal, but also to attracting prospective families, donors, and the political support of elected officials. Such practices compromised schools’ missions to advance equitable access to experiential, inquiry-based learning experiences for poor students and students of color. As schools adapted and evolved, school leaders redefined what it means to be progressive, shaping their notions of progressivism to what is possible in a market-based educational context.

Extending the argument that the basic “grammar,” or instructional and organizational routines, of schooling is resistant to change (Tyack & Tobin, 1994), this study demonstrates how ubiquitous market values create another grammar of schooling, organizing schools around the logic of the market. In adhering to a market-based grammar of schooling, schools enact practices and acquire resources that advance their survival in the competitive market, sometimes at the expense of their progressive pedagogical and political missions.

This study examines contracting out for public services to the private sector and the increased use of consultants as examples of the growing reliance on new public management strategies in public education. Although the extant literature has examined aspects of educational resource inequality, the growing privatization of core educational services, and education facilities bonds, scholars have not yet sufficiently considered the implications of education facilities finance policies for equity or as part of the broader privatization trend. To address these conceptual and topical gaps, this mixed methods dissertation draws on the tools of fiscal sociology and critical policy analysis to examine how California education finance policies have shaped the current system of school district debt financing over time, the sociopolitical factors (such as district median household income) that influence how districts interact with private organizations in the bond process (such as the level of involvement of private organizations and the fees paid to these organizations per student, and how these fees have changed over time), and how school districts’ experiences with school district debt financing policies vary.

Despite record spending on school construction in the decade leading up to the 2008 recession, investment in school facilities attended by minority and low-income students was far less than for their white and middle class counterparts (Filardo, Vincent, Sung, & Stein, 2006). Student access to equitable facilities in many states is largely determined by local wealth, voters’ willingness and ability to raise their own taxes to finance school construction through bond sales, and the nuances of state policies. Though the state of California has improved its educational funding policies over time, inequitable facilities funding persists despite policy reforms. In California, when districts prepare to construct and modernize educational facilities, they typically work with a team of private consultants and contractors to navigate the municipal bond financing process.

Findings indicate that California’s policy goals for providing equitable facilities for students fall short when school districts implement facilities policies, given the inadequacy of state funding mechanisms. The state’s reluctance to equitably fund facilities and the Governor’s plans for impending state disinvestment have allowed for an environment where private actors not only flourish, but also influence the policy process. Shortfalls in state support and training have led to the rise of private actors in the facilities financing industry that have stepped in to fill—and profit from—the void. I find that financial expertise comes at a high cost, particularly for elementary school districts and districts with lower median household income. School districts vary in their ability to pay for financial expertise, and when combined with existing political and ethical problems with a highly variable field of consultants and contractors, the absence of clear state guidance leaves school districts with varying abilities to implement complex state facilities policies, contributing to facilities inequities. When considered alongside the escalating costs school districts are paying for services on the operations side of the budget, these findings help portray the fuller extent to which resources are being transferred from the public to the private sector through contracting in an increasingly neoliberal system that already forces school districts to compete with one another for dwindling state funding.

Though this research has demonstrated that the field of contractors and consultants profiting from contracts with school districts for facilities financing, modernization, and construction is complex and growing, the issue is not whether there is “too much” privatization. Policies that have allowed for the rise of privatization in educational facilities financing and the implications of increasing privatization are far more consequential for educational inequity. I find that privatization impacts the distribution of power and resources between school districts and private actors, and affects facilities outcomes, particularly with regard to equity. California’s leaders will allow facilities to remain inequitable as long as the system for financing schools relies foundationally on disparate local property wealth and as long as school districts feel pressured to pay for financial expertise to navigate and compete within a complicated system. There remains a compelling need for state action to ensure educational equity for all students. I conclude that research on school facilities finance must shift its focus from efficiency and bond election outcomes to a broader consideration of the sociopolitical implications of privatization for educational equity.

This dissertation is a study of agency and liberatory practices for Black women’s basketball players within a holistically surveilled, predominantly White institution (PWI). Central to this study is the exploration of the dynamics surrounding Black labor in sport, particularly how the regulation and confinement of the body, mind, and spirit of Black student athletes allows for their continued exploitation by the institution of sport in U.S. higher education. I use Afrocentric feminist epistemology to design and execute a participatory study that flips the proverbial script on student athlete research: empowering Black student athletes to critically evaluate their own lived experiences while simultaneously exploring ways of disrupting the tools of regulation currently confining their agency and autonomy. In doing so, this dissertation highlights both how the regulation and control of Black female student athletes is inextricably linked to power, race and gender, and identifies where we can collectively build towards increased freedoms.

I built the participatory action research (PAR) methodology utilized in this study upon the conceptual intersections of Black feminisms and surveillance studies. As such, I also leveraged the site of data collection was also leveraged as a space for participants to identify opportunities to secure and exercise agency and bodily autonomy in real time—a process fellow PAR scholars refer to as the design serving as the intervention. I argue that by empowering Black women to authentically tell their own narratives we can disrupt an institution’s ability to uphold exploitative labor and domestication practices. This work serves as a call to action; in identifying opportunities for student athlete agency and bodily autonomy within a surveilled system. This call likewise challenges institutional actors to increase support for current student athletes in their quest to defiantly look back. While this dissertation primarily centers experiences of surveillance at the site of the institution of sport within U.S. higher education, findings also interrogate the holistic regulation and control of the Black woman’s body in society at large. The study includes a focus on timely issues surrounding biometric technologies and their implications on data privacy and consent policy, understanding the role and influence of sports media in confining Black womanhood, tracking the sustained emotional and cultural labor experienced by Black women in predominantly White spaces, and exploring emerging digital media tools that enable Black women to reimagine the possibilities of storytelling and resistance.