Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities

Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities

Bloomfield Cucchiara Maia

Discuss real estate with any young family and the subject of schools is certain to come up – in fact, it will likely be a crucial factor in determining where that family lives. Not merely institutions of learning, schools have increasingly become a sign of a neighborhood's vitality, and city planners have ever more explicitly promoted "good schools" as a means of attracting more affluent families to urban areas, a dynamic process that Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara critically examines in "Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities". Focusing on Philadelphia's Center City Schools Initiative, she shows how education policy makes overt attempts to prevent, or at least slow, middle-class flight to the suburbs. Navigating complex ethical terrain, she balances the successes of such policies in strengthening urban schools and communities against the inherent social injustices they propagate – the further marginalization and disempowerment of lowerclass families. By asking what happens when affluent parents become "valued customers", "Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities" uncovers a problematic relationship between public institutions and private markets, where the former are used to leverage the latter to effect urban transformations.

About the Author

Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara is assistant professor of urban education in the College of Education at Temple University.

Reviews

"'Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities' is a brave and subtle exploration of the contradictions which haunt attempts to use public education reform as a strategy for holding affluent, highly educated families in revitalizing center cities. Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara shows how the relentless focus on marketing public schools undermines their democratic purposes and stratifies citizens, exacerbating divisions of class and race. Beautifully written and powerfully argued, this book demands close attention by everyone concerned with the fate of cities, schools, and democracy" – Michael B. Katz, author of "The Price of Citizenship"

"Often the critical discussion of the privatization and marketization of schools takes place on a very rhetorical and general level and does little to help us understand how, specifically, schools are becoming more like businesses or more heavily influenced by markets. Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara provides a very clear and compelling example of the involvement of private people and business in public education and of the ways in which market strategies have been at work here. She offers a major contribution that provides a good, detailed look at how 'market mechanisms' play out in practice" – Lisa Stulberg, New York University

"Even though inequality exists, policy makers have traditionally clung to the ideology that all children are equally valuable. Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara's thoughtful, readable book shows how a popular reform aimed at keeping middle-class parents in the city ended up challenging this tenet of a democratic society. In their zeal to attract more middle-class families to the city, policy makers and educators adopted a stance where (white) middle-class families were seen as more valuable and more worthy than the existing working-class families. Cucchiara's carefully done ethnographic research shows why the policy was seen as a good idea. It is the rare book that shows the processes through which inequality is sustained in daily life; extremely interesting and thought-provoking – highly recommended!" – Annette Lareau, author of "Unequal Childhoods"

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