Critical Policy Analysis: Gains and Challenges

On Contradictions

The concept and reality of contradictions is a key element here. A large portion of educational policies are decidedly connected to the creation and recreation of inequalities in subtle—and not-so-subtle—ways. Some are very clearly more critically oriented. But a considerable number are riven with contradictions. They can be yes and no at one and the same time. This is visible, for instance, in the article on platform studies by Philip Nichols and Ezekiel Dixon-Román (2024), “Platform Governance and Education Policy: Power and Politics in Emerging EdTech Ecologies.” As it shows, some platforms can simultaneously function as mechanisms of profit generation, control of labor, hidden biases, and similar things. At the same time, they may provide resources for teachers to create pedagogic communities and to share what are even counter-hegemonic lessons and insights. These are important points because they ask us to be aware of the multiplicity of possible processes and outcomes, not only in the policies we justifiably criticize, as is so wisely documented in many of the articles included here, but also in more progressive policies and practices. This is something that is visible even in some of the best examples of critically democratic educational practices (see Apple et al., 2019).

Another example, one that is not sufficiently part of the issues given attention to in the set of articles, is homeschooling. Yet it is one of the fastest growing school “reforms” both in the United States and elsewhere. Much of its origin lies in a response to court-ordered desegregation and in conservative religious movements that reject secular understandings and institutions. Given this history and its propensity to produce a kind of “gated community” that aims to protect students from the culture and body of the “Other,” it has been justifiably highly controversial for its history, its racial and gender dynamics, its support of privatization, its often problematic curricula, and its over stated claims (see, for example, Apple, 2006; Averett, 2021; Lubienski et al., 2013).

However, even with its history, a number of minoritized groups have now appropriated homeschooling in partly counter-hegemonic ways. This is true of Black homeschooling in particular. The growth of Black homeschooling reflects the growing sentiment that the educational system itself may not offer enough real and lasting possibilities for a truly substantive and responsive transformation (Stewart, 2023). Once again, things can be yes and no at one and the same time. Agentic actions and actors are not “puppets.” They attempt to transform policies in directions that support themselves and that can partly interrupt dominant intentions, a fact that is visible in Eupha Jeane Daramola’s (2024) article in this special issue on Black imaginaries—“Racially Just Policy Change: Examining the Consequences of Black Education Imaginaries for K–12 Policy.”

This can only be understood by bringing multiple lenses to a policy’s history and functioning. The political economy of neoliberalism and privatization, critical race theory, cultural studies of identity, social movement formation, and detailed histories of education as an arena of cultural/ideological, political, and economic conflict and struggle—each of these offers significant assistance in understanding the meanings and the growing support of homeschooling and similar policies among multiple and widely divergent groups.

Although at times I wished for more attention to “reforms” such as homeschooling in this set of articles, the wide range of theories and approaches being employed by the authors included here certainly speaks well of the future of multiple approaches as a norm within critical policy studies.

Gains and Going Further

This increasing range of theories and methods is visible in a number of ways. For example, the analysis of the role of emotions by Vue and colleagues (2024) in their article, “Feeling the Threat of Race in Education: Exploring the Cultural Politics of Emotions in CRT-Ban Political Discourses”—what might be called “emotional economies”—is significant. Among other things, it raises questions about how we think about rationality and irrationality and about how these concepts are linked to deep-seated understandings of race (see Mills, 1997). Going further, just as importantly, it can open a door for the reader to examine a larger literature on the importance of “affective” relations and how capitalism and its accompanying relations minimize these forms of knowing. The critically oriented literature on this in education and social analysis is insightful and growing (see, for example, Lynch, 2022; Lynch et al., 2009). Thus, it would be important to also employ the kinds of work on emotions represented here as an opening to this larger body of work.

There are other areas where important gains are present. The articles document not only the development and use of a range of critical app-roaches to policy analysis but, just as importantly, a selection of issues that are themselves deeply related to the reproduction and interruption of inequalities. This is visible in, for example, the work by Zabala-Eisshofer and colleagues (2024) in this special issue, “Recommending Reform: A Critical Race and Critical Policy Analysis of Research Recommendations About School Resource Officers.” They discuss how academic research on school resource officers—a highly contentious and often divisive policy—often contains normative assumptions and reco-mmendations that are ideologically driven in both overt and subtle ways. Academic work is certainly not free of these influences. Making this much more visible through critically self-reflexive analyses opens a door to a more responsive and robust set of questions and actions that could challenge our commonsense assumptions that underpin this policy (see Burch, 2022).

Several other articles rightly direct our attention to policy documents and how they embody particular discourses and their accompanying politics and assumptions. This is clear, for example, in the article on corporal punishment by Dhaliwal and colleagues (2024; “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child? A Critical Discourse Analysis of State Corporal Punishment Policies and Practices”) and its discussion of morality, delinquency, and authority. Once again, the arguments here can be usefully connected to previous conceptual and historical analyses on punishment and moral communities in schooling (see Scribner & Warnick, 2021) and the role of physical segregation of “deviant” and “unwanted” youth (see Hamre & Valladsen, 2024).

In the same vein, policies that rightly have been subjected to critical analysis, such as the purchase and use of student lists by Jaquette and Salazar (2024; “A Sociological Analysis of Structural Racism in ‘Student List’ Lead Gen-eration Products”), are interrogated here using perspectives drawn from theories of structural racism. This, too, expands the range of conceptual and political tools that are available and makes it more likely that this perspective can provide links to such developments as Afro-pessimism and other critical traditions (see Gor-don, 2023).

Hegemonic Discourses and Absent Presences

There are other areas where the articles make quite thoughtful contributions. As I have argued elsewhere, critical analyses of absent presences are crucial. That is, what is missing is just as important as what is there. As the arguments offered by McCambly and Mulroy (2024) in “Constructing an Educational ‘Quality’ Crisis” show, the absence of explicit discussion of race and “race talk” does not mean that race is simply absent. As time evolved, even egalitarians involved in the process of policy reforms surrounding the metrics that drive educational measurement “all but eliminated the use of explicit references to race.” They employed “watered down” arguments and often “failed to mention [the studied policy’s] equity goals.” The authors show how this ultimately served racializing ends. Thus, absent presences are not simply there and then not there. Absences are often made through a process that creates a selective tradition over time and are closely connected to the aim of institutionalizing “historical amnesia.” The culture wars and their politics of marginalization and making critical traditions and experiences invisible have been part of the organized strategy of rightist groups. They provide powerful examples of this and of the place of forgetfulness as a tool of dominance.

In many ways, this particular study not only provides us with an insightful view of the effects of backlash politics. It does something else that is valuable. Its critical analysis of the genesis of policy language also is a fine example of what Stuart Hall (2017) has called the politics of disarticulation and rearticulation. Dominant groups appropriate some of the key language of those groups who are seeking substantive transformations in social and educational policies and practices. They subtly change the meaning of these terms to make them “safer” and then link them to existing and more conservative goals and movements (see Apple, 2006; Hall, 2017). Indeed, this is one of the key elements in the process of building and defending hegemonic discourses.

In current debates over educational policies, this is very visible in struggles over key concepts like “democracy.” Democracy itself is a “sliding signifier.” It can signify the politics of choice on a market or a “thick,” more inclusive collective sensibility. Thus, because it can and does have multiple meanings, it is constantly the subject of ideological conflict over which meaning dominates (Apple et al., 2019; Continetti, 2022). The continuing conflicts over diversity, equity, and inclusion, and over such things as “parental choice” and book banning, embody these linguistic and ideological politics.

These points should remind readers that all of this is going on in a context of increasing influence and power of rightist coalitions, ideological initiatives, and legislative attacks on “thick” democratic policies in all sectors of society (MacLean, 2018). This is rightly evident in a number of articles included here. But at times it might have been highlighted more, especially since the policies and practices that are subjected to critical scrutiny here may be hard to transform unless the process is accompanied by and connected to movements to change other elements in that context. Furthermore, if we do not think relationally about this larger context, we may miss crucial interruptions that are already going on that may provide a space for progressive changes to be built and defended in education (Verma & Apple, 2021).

Some Final Comments

Let me conclude this commentary by briefly noting a number of additional questions and suggestions that were stimulated by the articles and that would build on their accomplishments. While space limitations limit what I can say, there are certain key issues and questions that could also extend their work in quite productive directions. Among them are the following:

There is more I could say. But this does not detract in any way from the importance of what we are presented in this special issue and the ongoing dialogs to which it contributes. Critical policy analysis represents a series of initiatives that take the word “critical” as seriously as it deserves. It is to the credit of the authors of this fine collection of articles and of the editors who organized it that their contributions have stimulated me to engage with these issues and questions in productive ways. The tasks of under-standing and interruption continue.