ABSTRACT
In this chapter I draw on a study of Chicago’s high-stakes education accountability system (Lipman 2004) and more recent data (2004-2007) to examine some paradoxes of teaching in neo-liberal times in the US. I define two ‘moments’ in neo-liberal education policy. The first moment is the centralized monitoring and regulation of schools and teaching through standards and accountability processes which began in the 1990s and continues to the present. The second, beginning also in the 1990s but accelerating in the new millennium, is the marketization of schools through school choice, privatization of education services (for example, tutoring) and public charter schools run by private operators. These two ‘moments’ are in fact interrelated and overlapping. However, I discuss them separately to draw out the implications of new forms of accountability for teachers’ work and how that in turn influences teachers’ involvement in, and experiences with, marketbased reforms. Although education markets have been on the policy agenda in the US since the early 1990s, their expansion has been facilitated by high stakes accountability (Lipman and Haines 2007), particularly the federal No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB) in 2002.1 I use Chicago as a case study of changing teacher professionalism in the US, particularly in urban school districts, because Chicago has been a model for neo-liberal education projects. It also exemplifies the neo-liberal economic and political processes that are restructuring urban areas.
