Hurling Money: Public funding and private profit during Covid-19

Dr Kathryn Moeller, Shahnaaz Khan and María Fernanda Rodríguez from the Department of Education, University of Cambridge, presented a Margaret Anstee Centre public lecture on 13 May 2025.

 

This lecture set out to examine who profited from public money during the pandemic, and how local, state, and federal level politics and policies (in the US) shaped the terrain of profit-making by new educational technologies (edtech). 

 

Bringing together the theoretical frameworks of disaster capitalism (Klein, 2007), the politics of survival (Hill Collins 1990; Mitchell-Walthour, 2023) and educational capitalisation (Moeller et. al., 2024), this four-year, mixed-methods case study focused on Chicago Public Schools in Chicago, Illinois and Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida, two of the US’s top 10 largest school districts, with majority Black and Latinx students.

 

The team's research focused on the adoption of online learning platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic to deliver education as in-person schooling shut down. They looked at how funding was provided and the procurement processes and levels of oversight involved.

 

After examining the historical currents and foundations that led to this conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic, the presentation first examined how the districts and teachers’ unions managed this crisis, to understand how their responses shaped opportunities for profit. Second, it looked at how these districts educated during the crisis through a look at the existing platforms they employed and edtech companies with whom they contracted. Third, it jumped scale to an industry level, exploring how for-profit investors invested during the height of the pandemic, the investment bubble and crash that ensued, and how, and to what extent companies and investors profited from public money. Lastly, it looked at what has happened as the “free money went away,” and considers attempts to push for democratic accountability and transparency to reign in private profit from public resources.

 

The lecture was drawn from a co-authored chapter from the forthcoming manuscript, Silicon Futures: How Silicon Valley Influences Education around the World. Co-authors of the chapter are Kathryn Moeller, Shahnaaz Khan, María Fernanda Rodriguez, Klint Kanopka, Tyler Hook, Sonya Smyslova, and Mariam Sedighi.

 

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