Being QuantCritical of U.S. K-12 demographic data: using and reporting race/ethnicity in Florida Heartland Schools

ABSTRACT

In this study on K-12 schools in the U.S. Florida Heartland, I take a QuantCrit approach to uncover how processes of data transformation, which I call ‘racial re-formation’, shape the utilization and reporting of racial and ethnic representations of students. To understand actual data use at schools, I apply QuantCrit’s principles on how numbers are not neutral and how categories/groups are neither ‘natural’ nor given. I introduce ‘racial re-formation’ to identify the mechanisms behind expression of the QuantCrit principles in the data. Analyses of observations demonstrate that definitions of race/ethnicity are malleable, as personnel changed reported definitions of students as they used data in school decisions. Contrast of school records with teacher-created grade-level cards shows mismatch in student race/ethnicity between multiple school measures, while comparison of state vs. school records illustrates how policy affects demographic portraits. These practices led to varying representations, especially for American Indians and other groups, though ways to improve data collection, utilization, and reporting are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial re-formation
• Indigenous Mexicans
• Latinization
• school ethnography
• demography
• QuantCrit

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank research participants in Central County, the University of South Florida Anthropology Department, and the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While race and ethnicity are two different constructs, I use ‘race/ethnicity’ in conversation with the race and ethnicity data mobilized at the Florida schools at focus here as well as the Florida Department of Education so this research can be in discussion with their policies and actions.

2. In the U.S., the term ‘K-12ʹ is used to abbreviate ‘Kindergarten through 12th grade’, or the 13 total primary and secondary school years that children are expected to attend from the approximate ages of 5–18.

3. The Florida Heartland is a grouping of six counties which have been described as more culturally similar to the Deep South than other parts of Florida (Matschat 1938).

4. For a similar history on this for African American and other groups similarly facing erasure and mis-identification, see Baker (1998) and Vizcarra (2017).

5. For more on control, see Collins (1991).

6. Objective truths about identifications of race/ethnicity may not exist (Rosa and Flores 2017, 637), given that identifications involve social processes of negotiation (e.g. see Leeman 2018). However, for the purposes of improving school race/ethnicity representations, specific identifications (i.e. ‘Caribbean origin’ or ‘Black British’) may be less important than larger categorizations reflecting likelihood of receiving negative treatment (i.e. racism, discrimination).

7. Figures reported here follow FDOE rules where racial categories exclude Latinos.

8. During this time, migrant was defined by NCLB as having traveled in the past three years for seasonal, temporary, or agricultural labor.

9. I used the administrator’s final categorizations in analysis as those were used by the school.