“I Just Want to Finish High School like Everybody Else”: Continuation High School Students Resist Deficit Discourse and Stigmatization

ABSTRACT

Alternative education provides different and powerful opportunities for learning. In this article, the author focuses on students who resist stereotypes that are produced and maintained by dominant powers and ideologies, and who share their knowledge and experiences with systemic marginalization. Drawing from classroom videos, qualitative interviews, and a class-produced YPAR project, the author highlights the experiences of ten continuation high school students who speak back to the deficit framing of alternative education students. The students’ research project, which is now a public video documentary, has implications for school accountability reformers, educators, and practitioners.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical youth studies
• alternative education
• continuation high schools
• youth participatory action research
• deficit discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenny Sperling

Jenny Sperling (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interests include critical youth studies, educational policy studies, and the ethics of ethnography. She examines the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality and its impact on neoliberal educational policies and exclusionary school discipline and instruction.