Tess Futterman - American Government, Policy, and Social Inequality
Tess graduated from UC-Berkeley in the Spring of 2023 with a degree in American Studies and minors in History and Public Policy. After graduating, she served as a Student Success Coach for City Year New York, supporting students at a systemically underserved elementary school. She currently works as the Program Coordinator for the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) master’s program at Columbia University, where she manages academic affairs, operations, and enrichment activities for the program.
Area of Concentration Courses
Geography 130- Food and the Environment
Public Policy 165 - Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy
American Studies C111E - American Culture in the Age of Obama
Education C181 - What is the Role of Race in Urban Schools?
American Studies H110 - The New Gilded Age
Thesis
Chartering a New Future: Neoliberalism, Education, and the Bipartisan Effort to Reform Post-Industrial America
In the fall of 1992, California became the second state in the nation to pass charter school legislation. Written by State Senator Gary K. Hart and signed into law by Governor Pete Wilson, the California Charter School Act of 1992 (SB 1448) was a product of politics of neoliberalism, the economic and social impacts of the 1970s, and developing literature on education policies. The early 1990s marked a time in history when policymakers began experimenting with market approaches to education reform. Within the span of two years America saw its first school voucher programs, the inception of charter schools, new non-traditional teaching certificate programs, and school choice policies. The social, political, and economic context of the 1970s and 80s created an environment ripe for reform. Politicians, academics, and researchers alike began to question Keynesian economic theory and support free-market reform for all sects of society. Eventually, free-market reform percolated into the realm of education. This project aims to explain the relationship between the passage of SB 1448 and the bipartisan currents of burgeoning politics of neoliberalism and economics of deindustrialization at the time. When Governor Pete Wilson signed SB 1448 he stated: “we are in a new era” of public education. Wilson was correct. Since then, charter schools and other market approaches to education have come to shape the ways in which public education operates in America. This project analyzes the beginnings of this history that altered the state of public education in America. Ultimately, charter schools must be understood as a response to economic, political, and cultural transformations from the decade prior, a product of deindustrialization and declining social conditions, and an attempt to infuse neoliberalism into public education.
