Search

Purpose: Although California school discipline policy changes over the past decade have resulted in significant drops in suspension rates, scholars have found that racial disproportionality in punitive discipline persists for Black, Indigenous, and at times Latinx students. This study utilizes racial capitalism as an analytical framework to examine the mechanisms and justifications for racially disproportionate discipline across three distinct California political economies. Research Methods/Approach: Drawing on a subset of qualitative comparative case study data of five schools taken from a larger 5-year study of 31 schools in 17 California districts with distinct racial and economic composition, we investigate the phenomena of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx student disposability--those who continue to experience exclusion in a time of progressive school discipline reform. Findings: We find that (1) student disposability through discipline was not only intertwined with dominant local narratives about racial groups but also tied to a larger system of racial capitalism reliant on the racialized differentiation of students within every geographical location, and (2) when progressive alternative approaches to discipline fail, these reforms uncover rooted antiblackness, anti-indigeneity, and a gang imaginary such that students who fail or refuse to assimilate to the underlying labor-sorting function of US schools are considered disposable. Implications: Our findings highlight the need to center and elevate disposable youth brilliance in decision making, the importance of building collective movements against racial capitalism's grip on schools, and the obligation to build education beyond racial capitalism.

Purpose: Schoolwide college access programs are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in high schools across the country. Research on their effectiveness in improving college-going rates is inconclusive, prompting scholars to question how programs affect practices in schools. To better understand how schools and college access programs work in partnership to expand college advising resources, we study the practices of high schools partnered with a national college access program. Research Methods/Approach: We conducted case studies of two schools, interviewing 118 teachers, staff, parents, students, and program partners over 2 years of data collection. Using the concept of school social capital—the cognitive, material, and social resources that schools derive from their partnership with other organizations—we examined the different ways that school staff interact and collaborate with college access partner staff. Findings: We find that partnerships can help schools become more extensive brokers of college knowledge and advice by engaging in three practices: referrals, collaborative actions, and norm-setting practices. When engaged in collaboration and norm-setting, staff roles expand to include the provision of college advising services and contribute to increasing student access to advising schoolwide. We further find that school leadership plays a significant role in facilitating the types of practices that emerge from college access partnerships. Implications: Although college access partnerships can give rise to multiple advising agents in a school, such effects must be fostered. The alignment of values and goals between partners appears necessary to facilitate brokering practices between staff, as well as leadership to sanction those practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis caused by COVID-19 disrupted education worldwide and intensified the difficulties faced by disadvantaged and low-performing schools, with school leaders playing a key role in developing capacity for organisational learning to face this challenge. Through a qualitative case study, this article explores how leaders of three Chilean schools, with support from external ministry advisors, developed adaptations and innovation in response to the disruption to ensure educational continuity, employing the perspective of absorptive capacity to identify, assimilate, and take advantage of information from external agents. Findings suggest that, during the pandemic, schools faced complex problems related with the disadvantage of their communities and their proposed solutions to these problems were mediated by their internal organisational conditions, the characteristics of external support agents and their interaction. The study discusses how school leaders can develop capacity for organisational learning with support from external agents to lead in disruptive times. Likewise, absorptive capacity provides a framework that facilitates the understanding of the factors that influence the opportunities for generating such adaptive solutions in disadvantaged and low-performing schools, while highlighting the importance of considering schools as part of an ecosystem that can enhance their capacity for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The article examines the conditions by which research alliances (RAs) can support district officials in learning how to design and manage more equitable education systems. Special attention is given to the role of theoretically driven research in facilitating learning and the accumulation of expert knowledge. Methods: Results are informed by a 4-year comparative case study involving two established RAs that operated in urban settings. Data included 110 semistructured interviews with RA researchers and staff, district officials, and other stakeholders; observations of social interactions between RA and district staff; and analysis of RA materials, including research reports. Findings: Results suggest that district learning is aided by theoretically driven research that enables practitioners to learn from the clash between their implicit theories and the results surfaced by RA inquiry. Findings further suggest that to support the incremental accumulation of knowledge, RA and district managers need to construct a working field-level theory of improvement that guides inquiry into specific projects and that draws connections among district programs that might otherwise seem unrelated. Implications: Our analysis suggests that for RAs to support districts in learning how to design more equitable systems, they must engage in theoretically driven work that draws connections between the theories of action that inform individual programs and broader theories of improvements. This will require RAs to enhance the theoretical rigor of their work and to enter into more interdependent relationships with districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marketization of U.S. schools has increasingly complicated and even undermined the democratic aims of education, causing many to argue that democratic and market ideologies are fundamentally opposed. This meta-ethnographic study uses conceptual tools from democratic theory and the research on civic education to investigate how leaders in one market-based organization—charter schools—grapple with tensions between the market and democracy in fostering the democratic orientations of their students and parents. Findings reveal that charter leaders primarily facilitate democratic learning opportunities that advance their organizational interests and promote a narrow and more individualistic conceptualization of democracy at the expense of a communitarian, justice-oriented one. The bounded vision of democracy observed in charter school practices suggests that market pressures may drive charters to focus their democratic engagement on the instrumental aims of ensuring their organizational survival in a competitive educational marketplace, despite espoused commitments to broader democratic aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School district central offices regularly engage with external partners in improvement efforts, but these partnerships are not always productive. Indeed, little is known about under what conditions partnerships are likely to lead to organizational learning outcomes. We conducted a longitudinal comparative case study of two departments in one urban school district central office, both working with the same external partner. Data included 131 interviews and 372 hours of observations as well as artifacts and social network data. While one department did not incorporate the partner's ideas into policies and routines, the other demonstrated greater integration. We argue this difference is due to organizational conditions that foster absorptive capacity and to the nature of department–partner interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As schools face growing competitive pressures, researchers have investigated the increasing reliance on marketing and its implications for various racial and socioeconomic groups. Although research has expanded our knowledge of marketing's gatekeeping qualities, it has less often considered the manner in which school marketing efforts contribute to broader, social understandings of race and the characterization of racial groups. Because marketing has historically played a pivotal role in the construction of race and racial identity in American society, this exploratory study considers if and how racial identities are configured in the marketing materials of two prominent charter management organizations (CMOs). Employing critical discourse analysis, this study suggests that the focal CMOs employ a racial discourse characterized by indirect racial references that are supplemented with negative depictions of the communities and racial groups they serve. I argue that the focal CMOs’ racial discourse contributes to the reification of colorblindness, the dominant racial frame that characterizes the manner in which many understand race and race relations. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the CMOs’ espousal of color blindness in their marketing materials, noting how the discursive obfuscation of race affects the manner in which educational leaders imagine educational solutions and neglects the continued and unique impact that race has in everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the primary aims of choice policies is to introduce competition between schools. When parents can choose where to send their children, there is pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, do school leaders recognize market pressures? What strategies do they use in response? This study examines how choice creates school-level actions using qualitative data from 30 schools in New Orleans. Findings suggest that school leaders did experience market pressures, yet their responses to such pressures varied, depending in part on their perceptions of competition and their status in the market hierarchy. Some took steps toward school improvement, by making academic and operational changes, whereas others engaged in marketing or cream skimming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]