Date of Award
Spring 2022
Document Type
Restricted Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2022 Naomi Horn. All rights reserved. Access to this work is restricted to users within the Swarthmore College network and may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. Sharing with users outside of the Swarthmore College network is expressly prohibited. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Educational Studies Department, Economics Department
First Advisor
Edwin Mayorga
Second Advisor
Lisa Smulyan
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore how racialized neoliberalism, a popular policy framework that emphasizes individual profits at the expense of historical context, feeds off of disasters. I then ask what that relationship produces within urban and educational policy. Using a middle school in North Nashville, a historically Black neighborhood that is undergoing rapid gentrification, as a case study, I contextualized changes in education with changes in the surrounding neighborhood. Although researchers have previously examined the influence of neoliberalism on disaster policy, urban policy, and educational policy, I aimed to bring those three areas of study together more robustly. I examined newspaper records, finding that public discourse originally claimed an investment in supporting residents, but quickly switched to value profit maximization over community investment. I also interviewed four educators to learn about how changes in the neighborhood have impacted changes within the school. I found that the school system deprived the school of much-needed resources in the name of educational reform, and that disruption in the surrounding community had strong impacts on students. I conclude by putting my interview data in conversation with the archival data and proposing alternative structures for urban and educational policy that would better support communities that have been historically abandoned by local governments.
Recommended Citation
Horn, Naomi , '22, ""The Tradeoff is Not Enough:" Educational Opportunity and Organized Abandonment in a Historically Black Nashville Neighborhood" (2022). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 379.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/379