Policy & Reform

Autism—a concept that barely existed 75 years ago—currently feeds multiple, multi-billion-dollar-a-year, global industries. In The Autism Industrial Complex: How Branding, Marketing, and Capital Investment Turned Autism into Big Business, Alicia A. Broderick analyzes how we got from the 11 children first identified by Leo Kanner in 1943 as “autistic” to the billion-dollar autism industries that are booming today. Broderick argues that, within the Autism Industrial Complex (AIC), almost anyone can capitalize on—and profit from—autism, and she also shows us how. The AIC has not always been there: it was built, conjured, created, manufactured, produced, not out of thin air, but out of ideologies, rhetorics, branding, business plans, policy lobbying, media saturation, capital investment, and the bodies of autistic people. Broderick excavates the 75-year-long history of the concept of autism, and shows us how the AIC—and indeed, autism today—can only be understood within capitalism itself. The Autism Industrial Complex is essential reading for a wide variety of audiences, from autistic activists, to professionals in the autism industries, to educators, to parents, to graduate students in public policy, (special) education, psychology, economics, and rhetoric.Watch the book presentation "Raising Awareness of the AIC" hosted by NJACE and featuring the author, Alicia Broderick at: https://youtu.be/-fxzfuvuek4?t=336Listen to Anne Borden King interview the author on The Noncompliant Podcast: https://noncompliantpodcast.com/2022/06/30/is-there-an-autism-industrial-complex-interview-with-prof...Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Critical Autism Studies; Disability Studies--Theory, Policy, Practice; Disability & Rhetoric; Disability & Cultural Studies; Doctoral Seminar in Disability Studies; Cultural Foundations of Disability in Education

American public education has been under assault for the last few decades as a “broken” system that needs a complete overhaul. In large part, these opinions are offered by people and organizations who know little about schools. But who are these influencers? This book is about conservative philanthropies, the organizations and individuals within their networks, and the strategies they use to shape educational policy and practice in K-12 and higher education. Each chapter examines a philanthropy, philanthropic network, or corporation focused on pushing an agenda of individualism, privatization, and conservative ideologies. Based in extensive research, including the tax filings of specific philanthropic foundations, the authors demonstrate how the philanthropic elite work within federal, state, and local governmental contexts to influence policy and practice. Within a global context of increasing wealth inequality, the authors question the motivations of these privileged few to withhold tax dollars from the US treasury where duly elected representatives can determine how tax dollars are used to benefit society. By allowing these philanthropic organizations tax exemptions under the guise of assumed benevolence, are citizens giving up their ability to hold these organizations accountable for how the money is spent? This book, aimed at a general audience of educators, provides the in-depth knowledge necessary to understand and resist private control of public policies and institutions.

Conservative ideologues have sought to shift the focus from the collective good to the individual good and to redirect the purposes and aims of education away from public benefit and in favor of private enterprise. As such, market-oriented, privatized, and standardized approaches to education reform have worked toward achieving that goal. This book is a primer on how the political right is utilizing various aspects of philanthropy and the political process to influence educational policymaking. In 1971, corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a detailed memo that galvanized a small group of conservative philanthropists to create an organizational structure and fifty-year plan to alter the political landscape of the United States. Funded with significant “dark money,” the fruits of their labor are evident today in the current political context and sharp cultural divisions in society. Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance examines the ideologies behind the philanthropic efforts in education from the 1970s until today. Authors examine specific strategies philanthropists have used to impact both educational policy and practice in the U.S. as well as the legal and policy context in which these initiatives have thrived. The book, aimed for a broad audience of educators, provides a depth of knowledge of philanthropic funding as well as specific strategies to incite collective resistance to the current context of hyperaccountability, privatization of schooling at all levels, and attempts to move the U.S. further away from a commitment to the collective good.Perfect for courses such as: Critical and Contemporary Issues in Education, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis, Social Foundations of Education, Philanthropy, Public Policy & Community Change, Philanthropic Studies, Sociology of Education, Politics of Education, Current Issues in Education, Government and the Mass Media, Polarization of American Politics.

Many people believe that “education” has a disproportionately negative effect on them and those close to them. With so much wealth, technological prowess, innovation, and economic development, why do we still have marginalization, social inequalities, conflict, mass incarceration and generational poverty? The connection to democracy, Education for Democracy (EfD) and social justice is, for Carr and Thésée, clear, and this volume interweaves a narrative within these themes based on a Freirian theoretical backdrop. This book presents a vision for transformative education and EfD, seeking to cultivate, stimulate and support political and media literacy, critical engagement and a re-conceptualization of what education is, and, importantly, how it can address entrenched, systemic and institutional problems that plague society. Based on over a decade of empirical research in a range of contexts and jurisdictions, the authors strive to link teaching and learning with agency, solidarity, action and transformative change within the conceptual framework of a critically-engaged EfD.    Perfect for courses in: Sociology of Education; Social Justice and Education; Democracy and Civics; Community Engagement; Education Policy; Service Learning; Education Reform; Citizenship Education; Transformative Education; Politics of Education.