Race and opportunity in a public alternative school

Abstract

This qualitative case-study explores questions about the stratifying role of public alternative schools created for ‘at-risk’ youth by analyzing the school experience of students who attend a single continuation high school and the process of student enrollment and referral to that school. Drawing on the concept of whiteness as property, this article demonstrates how the continuation high school maintained and protected the property functions of whiteness through acts of symbolic violence and the systematic removal of non-white students from the school district’s mainstream high school. Instead, students were placed in a substandard alternative school lacking in material and intellectual resources. Furthermore, teachers, counselors, and administrative staff at the mainstream and continuation high schools alike drew upon the racial ideology of merit to rationalize the overrepresentation of non-white youths at the study school and to ‘deracialize’ the student referral process.

Keywords:

• education
• Critical Race Theory
• alternative schools
• race
• continuation high schools

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, August 2010. I would like to thank the editor and reviewers of Race Ethnicity and Education for their helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank Robert Crosnoe, Ben Carrington, Sergio A. Cabrera, David Glisch-Sánchez, and members of the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Sociology's Race and Ethnicity Study Group for critical feedback.

Notes

1. The charter school movement, which took root in the early 1990s, is an outgrowth of the larger ‘school choice movement,’ premised on a politically conservative education theory in the US that asserts the most effective method to improve public education is to open the public system to private economic market forces (Toma and Zimmer 2012). The theory maintains, by providing parents and students with consumer choice, autonomy, and promoting teaching assessments in line with traditional business models – thus creating a ‘market driven education’ model (Contreras 1995) – will increase competition to improve the overall function of schools and allow parents to personally optimize their child's educational experience. Charter schools operate independently of public school districts, are supported through private partnerships, and are the most popular and visible ‘choice’ school to flourish from this camp (Renzulli and Evans 2005). Since charter schools tend to be small and are comprised of private–public partnerships and curriculum that deviates from standard local school district curricula, they are considered to be ‘alternative’ and therefore fall within the broad category of ‘alternative education.’ They continue to grow nationally in number despite ongoing controversy over whether they offer viable educational options to students locked into inferior public schooling, or subvert resources and confidence in traditional public schools from the most vulnerable youth populations and communities (see Nathan 2004; Brown et al. 2003).

2. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Lawsuit was the American Supreme Court Case ruled on in 1954 that determined de jure racial segregation to be in violation of the 14th amendment of the US constitution, thus, effectively overturning the 1897 Plessy v. Ferguson case which had ruled racially ‘separate but equal’ services and facilities to be constitutional (Patterson, xxii). The Brown decision is commonly recognized as marking a dramatic turning point in the realization of racial equality in the US, however, it has been argued the passage of Brown was more symbolic than substantive. Southern US states resisted enforcement of desegregation in the wake of its passage, spurring the subsequent ruling of Brown II a year later that gave local school districts the power and oversight to desegregate schools and mandated this process be accomplished with ‘all deliberate speed.’ The subjective and relative interpretation of ‘all deliberate speed,’ enabled state and local powers to circumvent the implementation of the Brown legislation and as a consequence, the Brown legislation was not fully implemented throughout the US until their final litigation in the 1974 & 1977 Milliken V. Bradley cases (see also Lipsitz 2006, 34; Patterson 2001; and Bell 2004).

3. Quotes from letter sent to the Hastings City School District Office.

4. Notes from City Hall Meeting, residents of the relocation community voiced opposition to the school move into Hills neighborhood.

5. There exists a body of sociological research and literature that interrogates measures of SES, the various indicators that are combined to determine SES, and ongoing debates over the veracity and reliability in their use as true measures of SES. Moreover, there are longstanding debates over whether SES is a sufficient measure of class or economic inequality at all, or rather, obscures class struggle and inequality generally (for further reference see McNall, Levine, and Fantasia 1991; Hauser and Warren 1997; Wright 2005; and Lareau and Conley 2008). With these debates in mind, I have utilized the best possible measures to approximate variation in family income between these two schools.

6. These numbers are based on the civilian employed population in Hastings, CA, 16 years of age and older.