Urban Sanctuary Schools for Diverse Populations: Examining Curricular Expectations and School Effectiveness for Student Learning

ABSTRACT

This ethnographic case study problematizes the current high stakes accountability efforts that have led many school leaders to inadvertently maintain a school environment in which deficit perspectives and low academic expectations in the classroom persist. Drawing from an urban sanctuary school framework, this study works to center the voices of low-income students of color from an urban high school in California, who have historically faced school alienation and academic challenges, to describe their notions of academic expectations held by their teachers. The centrality of student voices and ethnographic descriptions of the school illuminate a moral dialogue that can assist school leaders in challenging ineffective school structures. These efforts must place deficit thinking and low classroom expectations into question as our nation's biggest obstacles toward schoolwide excellence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel D. Liou

Daniel D. Liou is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership and Innovation at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. His research focuses on how teachers and school leaders establish conditions, norms, and practices associated with their educational expectations of students as an indicator of school equity and effectiveness. Liou is currently engaging in collaborative research projects with schools and communities of color in Arizona, California, and Nevada to underscore the systemic challenges and justice-oriented practices that impact students' ethos and trajectories along the P-20 educational pipeline.

Tyson E. J. Marsh

Tyson E. J. Marsh is an associate professor of Educational Administration in the Teaching, Learning and Social Justice Department at Seattle University. His community work, teaching, and scholarship is informed by critical theories of race and class. Because #blacklivesmatter, Dr. Marsh believes that the voices of Black youth and communities silenced within and beyond P-20 education are central to the struggle against white supremacist state-sanctioned violence.

René Antrop-González

René Antrop-González is Dean and professor of Urban Education in the School of Urban Education at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His research focuses on the schooling experiences of Latinx secondary students in urban schools. Additionally, he is interested in work that centers on teacher education programs that labor to dismantle the reproduction of white supremacy. Antrop-González enjoys collaborating with emerging scholars of color, as they push his thinking around critical education issues.