Counternarratives of students’ experiences returning to comprehensive schools from an involuntary disciplinary alternative school

Abstract

Educators’ excessive uses of exclusionary discipline have led to increased placements of students in disciplinary alternative schools, but few studies examine student experiences after their alternative school placements. Using a theoretical framework informed by critical race theory and the role of the discourse of safety in student discipline, we compose the counternarratives of nine middle school students’ experiences with the transition from an involuntary disciplinary placement back to a comprehensive school. We then analyze across cases to identify commonalities in their stories. Findings show that students experience dehumanization and exclusion that reflect second-class citizenship. We discuss how educators can resist perpetuating this under class even as the overtly racist rhetoric of populist nationalism replaces the neoliberal color-blind version of the discourse of safety.

Keywords:

• Exclusionary discipline
• marginalization
• disciplinary alternative school
• critical race theory
• intersectionality

Zero tolerance and disciplinary alternative schools

Educators’ increased use of exclusionary discipline in the United States has led to more frequent student placements in disciplinary alternative schools (Carver, Lewis, and Tice 2010). Assignments to disciplinary alternative schools have increased due to the proliferation of zero tolerance policies at the state, district, and school levels that require administrators to suspend or expel all students who commit certain infractions (Vaught 2011). Despite the ‘color-blind’ nature of these policies, educators implement them in racialized ways resulting in a discipline gap between White students and students of color as well as those from low-income backgrounds (Casella 2003; Gregory, Skiba, and Noguera 2010; Howard 2008; Skiba et al. 2002). Students of color are disciplined over three times more frequently than White students, and primarily for behaviors such as ‘willful defiance,’ which educators judge subjectively (Skiba et al. 2002; US Department of Education 2014). Consequently, students of color comprise the majority of school suspensions, expulsions, and assignments to disciplinary alternative schools (Booker and Mitchell 2011; Hilberth and Slate 2014; US Department of Education 2014).

Carver, Lewis, and Tice (2010) collected data for the US National Center for Education Statistics on public, alternative school enrollment during the 2007–08 school year. Of the total 645,500 students enrolled, 48% attended districts enrolling over 50% students of color, showing that districts with the highest percentage of minoritized students sent the most students to alternative schools. Although this report did not indicate the racial breakdown of student enrollment across schools, smaller studies suggest that commonly over 80% of students enrolled in alternative schools are Black or Latino, as was also the case with the school in this study (Brown 2007; Kennedy-Lewis 2012; Kim and Taylor 2008; Perzigian et al. 2016). Disproportionate assignment of students of color to these schools raises the question about the role of alternative schools in the pushout of these students as well as their placement on the school-to-prison pipeline (Advancement Project 2010; Skiba, Arredondo, and Williams 2014; Texas Appleseed 2007; Vanderhaar, Petrosko, and Muñoz 2013).

While alternative education has been variously defined over the past half century (Raywid 1995), current disciplinary alternative schools house students whose behavior poses a challenge to educators or breaks district zero tolerance policies (Vanderhaar, Petrosko, and Muñoz 2013). States vary with regard to the requirements for these disciplinary alternative schools as well as whether or not districts or local education agencies are mandated to continue to offer educational services to expelled students (Kennedy-Lewis 2014; Porowski, O’Connor, and Luo 2014). Educators often refer to these schools as places where unruly students can be reformed through the provision of additional supports and services so that they can ultimately return to comprehensive schools (Gurantz 2010). Evidence suggests, however, that these programs vary widely in the quality and types of support services provided (Kennedy-Lewis 2014; Porowski, O’Connor, and Luo 2014), and districts have sole authority to determine the conditions under which a student returns from an alternative to a comprehensive school.

Few studies have documented the results of students’ transitions back to comprehensive schools after an alternative school placement, though limited data suggest that educators’ presumptions about students’ future success at a comprehensive school may not come to fruition (Davis 2003; Gurantz 2010; Kennedy-Lewis, Whitaker, and Soutullo 2016). In Gurantz’s (2010) analysis of 418 students making the transition from alternative to comprehensive high schools, only 59% of students finished the school year in a comprehensive high school, whereas 17% returned to an alternative school, and 24% were not enrolled in either. These data suggest that students have difficulties reintegrating into comprehensive schools. There exists the need to understand the qualitative nature of students’ experiences in order to contextualize educators’ decisions to assign students to these placements. This study draws upon critical race theory and utilizes the methodology of counternarratives to address the research questions:

1. What are students’ experiences with alternative school placements and transitions back to comprehensive schools?

2. What do students say about the impacts of their alternative school placements, the decisions educators make, and how they are treated?

3. How do students’ experiences reflect the intersectional oppression that reduces their opportunities?

School discipline outcomes as manifestations of institutional racism

Critical race theory (CRT) foregrounds the roles of race and racism in producing societal inequities (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Crenshaw et al. 1995; Gillborn and Ladson-Billings 2010; Omi and Winant 1994). CRT is a critical social theory, meaning it examines how institutional and individual interactions culturally reproduce social hierarchies and power structures (Johnson and Howard 2009; Solórzano 1997; Tate 1997). CRT presumes that racial oppression exists in all institutions in stratified and post-colonial societies and becomes enacted by individuals within those institutions both consciously and subconsciously (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Carmichael and Hamilton 1967; Gillborn 2006; Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995). One core belief of contemporary critical race scholars is that the subconscious reproduction of racial inequities occurs within a color-blind frame of reference, or what Henry Giroux (2008, 80) calls an ‘ideology of racelessness.’ Using a color-blind lens, well-meaning actors assert that racial differences do not impact personal or group outcomes even as these actors support and participate in systems that result in grossly disparate outcomes for different racial groups (Bonilla-Silva 2014). This ideology of racelessness fuels the ‘new racism’ (Ansell 1997; Bonilla-Silva 2014; Giroux 2008), which replaced overt and sanctioned discrimination with covert beliefs and practices obscured by the myth of meritocracy. A core tenet of the ideology of racelessness, the myth of meritocracy asserts that an individual’s life circumstances directly reflect that individual’s commitment to moral virtue and hard work (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Crenshaw et al. 1995; Gillborn 2006; Tate 1997).

Teachers in today’s schools frequently promote the myth of meritocracy by telling students that in order to succeed, they must work hard, and that if they work hard, they will succeed (Milner 2010). However, as Lewis and Diamond (2015) illustrate in their mixed methods case study of one well-resourced suburban US high school, these same teachers carry out the policies that result in racially disparate outcomes such as academic tracking and grouping, and exclusionary discipline. CRT offers a useful lens for examining how institutional racism shapes the disproportionate disciplining of students of color (Howard 2008; Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995).

Educators often justify exclusionary discipline practices, despite their disproportionately negative impacts on students of color, by subscribing to a ‘discourse of safety’ (Kennedy-Lewis 2014, 170). The discourse of safety has dominated US national rhetoric since the 1980s War on Drugs and ‘asserts the need to keep schools ‘safe’ by prioritizing the needs of the group over the needs of individuals; asserts that students’ behavior results from conscious, well-informed choices; and advocates for punishments severe enough to deter potential perpetrators’ (Kennedy-Lewis 2014, 170). The discourse of safety supports the use of zero tolerance policies, which have been promoted as a way to eliminate racial biases in disciplinary consequences but have instead continued to disproportionately exclude students of color from schools (Skiba et al. 2011). These racial disproportionalities resulting from color-blind policies should motivate educators to re-evaluate the effectives of school discipline practices (Lewis and Diamond 2015). However, educators persist in punishing students of color more frequently and harshly than their White peers, demonstrating the dehumanization and adultification of these young people (Goff et al. 2014).

The dehumanization and adultification of Black youth in school discipline

We define adultification as the treatment and consideration of Black youth in ways befitting adults. Goff et al. (2014) state that dehumanization changes the meaning ascribed to the category ‘children,’ which has age and innocence as defining characteristics. Dehumanization involves the denial of full humanness, and in the case of children, robs them of presumed innocence. Dehumanization also makes it permissible to treat Black children in ways that would otherwise be morally objectionable, making these children more vulnerable to severe treatment or adult-like punishment. In situations where they receive disciplinary sanctions, Black children are often treated as though they are at least four and a half years older than they actually are (Goff et al. 2014).

In the case of school discipline, dehumanization manifests when educators assign punishments befitting an older student or an adult and justifies educators’ uses of exclusionary discipline. When educators adultify students who have violated school rules, educators no longer see students as innocent adolescents who have behaved impulsively. Instead, educators dehumanize these students by viewing students’ behaviors as criminal violations rather than as developmentally appropriate missteps. Kennedy-Lewis (2014) asserted that these practices reflect the discourse of safety by positioning students as conscious actors in control of their behavior. For example, if a student accidently strikes an adult during a physical altercation with another student, she may be dehumanized and adultified by being arrested and charged with assault and expelled from school rather than counseled. Educators justify this response by saying that they must keep the school ‘safe.’

Though the reasons for the dehumanization and subsequent adultification of Black children are beyond the scope of this study, we do know that there has been a long, sordid record of violence against Black children rooted in dehumanization in the United States, as evidenced in the treatment of the Scottsboro Nine and Emmitt Till and the contemporary murders of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and Michael Brown. The physical deaths of these young, Black males portends the potential educational death of Black children who have been ushered out of school at the hand of educators enforcing zero tolerance discipline policies grounded in new racism (Giroux 2008).

The methodological and institutional roles of master and counternarratives in social reproduction

Master narratives in school discipline

The discourse of safety privileges a set of behaviors that count as acceptable and posits that the majority of students need to be protected from behaviors by the minority of students who do not comply. This discourse reflects ‘majoritarian stories’ (Solórzano and Yosso 2002, 28) by positioning behaviors that are defined in dominant, middle-class, White culture as respectful and engaged (such as being quiet, sitting still, and making eye contact) as the only acceptable behaviors in the classroom. Majoritarian stories reinforce a master narrative, which Stanley (2007, 14) defines as a ‘script that specifies and controls how some social processes are carried out.’ Movements, vocalizations, and responses that do not conform to the master narrative of appropriate school behaviors are interpreted as disruptive, defiant, dangerous, and to be punished and extinguished for the betterment of the school as a whole (Ferguson 2000).

The master narrative legitimates the school removal of any student whose behavior challenges teachers, and teachers promote and enforce majoritarian expectations when they use punitive discipline in response to being challenged. Although educators rarely mention the roles of race and gender in making discipline-related decisions, those decisions are not race- or gender-neutral (Carter, Fine, and Russell 2014; Howard 2008; Skiba et al. 2011; US Department of Education 2014). Intersections of oppression in the sociocultural dimensions of individuals’ identities (Collins 2004; Crenshaw 1991) result in the direst consequences for Black boys living in poverty (Duncan 2002), though Black girls and other minoritized groups are also disciplined at disproportionate rates (Morris 2016; US Department of Education 2014; Wallace et al. 2008).

Using counternarratives to portray student experiences

Majoritarian stories silence the experiences, explanations, and voices of protest of minoritized students, particularly those who have been pushed out of school. Counternarratives de-center majoritarian stories by voicing challenges to the presumptions made by the dominant discourse of safety (Howard 2008; Solórzano and Yosso 2002). As a genre, counternarratives draw upon the lens of CRT. Solórzano and Yosso (2002, 32) define counternarratives as ‘a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told (i.e. those on the margins of society).’ Counternarratives seek to reveal intersections of oppression and the role of institutional prejudice in systematically disadvantaging individuals belonging to non-dominant groups (Solórzano and Yosso 2002). The counternarratives of students who have been pushed out of school challenge the dominant discourse of safety by humanizing students from certain backgrounds and problematizing educators’ decisions to systematically punish and exclude them (see Brown 2007; Brown and Rodríguez 2009; Tuck 2011).

Method

In this interpretivist qualitative study, we constructed counternarratives drawn from the voices and experiences of students who had been placed at a disciplinary alternative school and made the transition back to a comprehensive school. Our counternarratives correspond to Solórzano and Yosso’s (2002) description of biographical narratives told by another in which our analytical interpretation was guided by our participants. While we did not foreground race in recruitment or data collection, we presumed that the disproportionate number of students of color assigned to alternative schools reflected institutional racism and intersectional oppression that would be woven through these stories.

We recruited nine students from one district’s alternative school in the Southeastern United States. We tracked students as they returned from the alternative school to a comprehensive school and complemented students’ accounts with those of educators as well as with classroom observations and documents such as reports of grades, attendance, and behavior. We then examined data from each case and wrote case narratives. Using these case narratives, we conducted a cross-case analysis to understand the nature of students’ shared experiences and how institutionalized practices impacted them.

Researcher positionality

We are two middle-class White women and one middle-class African-American woman, each with a deep commitment to anti-racism and social justice. Two of us have been full-time classroom teachers of predominantly minoritized students, and one of us has taught in a disciplinary alternative school. While we are committed to unlearning the prejudices psychologically interwoven into our identities, we know that that we will never completely understand what it is like to live at the intersections of oppression that our participants face. Because we interpret their stories, our positionality limits our abilities to accurately portray dimensions of their experiences. Nevertheless, we believe that undertaking this work using an interpretive paradigm affords us three advantages that outweigh the risk of inadvertently perpetuating oppressive conditions.

First, our cultural capital allowed us to gain access to districts, schools, and students, which we understand would be more challenging, if not impossible, if we did not have this privilege. Second, we have been professionals in the settings we are critiquing. We understand from an insider’s perspective educators’ difficulties with balancing the pressures of top-down education mandates with efforts to engage in liberatory educational practices that productively respond to students’ challenging needs and behaviors. Finally, we chose to conduct research at the middle school level, and we believe our experiences as teachers and researchers in middle schools make us better at interpreting students’ experiences than if we had not taught at this level (Polkinghorne 2004; Schwandt 1994).

To the students, however, two of us are White, middle-class women, just like many of the oppressive teachers they have had. Here, we draw upon and extend Gillborn’s (2006) distinction between methodological and conceptual tools in CRT scholarship to acknowledge limitations in our methodological approach. We lacked sufficient time with students to build the trust required to talk openly and critically about race. For this reason, we did not ask students directly about race, which is why racism is not named as often in the narratives as we know it manifested. However, we used our CRT lens as a conceptual tool to focus on the roles of institutional policies and agents and to include those in each narrative and in our cross-case analysis.

Setting and participants

Data collection for this study was done in Limestone County Unified School District¹ in the Southeastern United States. The district was comprised of over 25,000 students, most of whom lived in the county’s main city with the remainder living in outlying rural areas. Forty-five percent of students were White; over 35% were Black; over 5% were Latino; and under 10% were Asian or mixed race. The district had over 30 elementary schools, 15 secondary schools, and one disciplinary alternative school. Limestone County’s disciplinary alternative school, the Phoenix School, served all of its comprehensive secondary schools. Students in grades 6–12 could be assigned to the Phoenix School for two primary causes. They: (1) had a history of disciplinary office referrals; or (2) committed one major offense at the comprehensive school and were removed.

During the 2012–13 school year, nearly 80 middle school students attended the Phoenix School. Seventy-three percent of the students had been retained in a previous grade and/or had a specific learning disability. To be able to return to a comprehensive school, Phoenix students were required to advance through the school’s point-based behavior management system. After moving to at least the second of four tiers of the behavioral system, students were eligible to seek return, and school and district administrators had the final say about placement. Study participants were assigned to Phoenix during the 2012–13 school year and returned to comprehensive schools either during the second semester of that year (five students) or the fall semester of the 2013–14 school year (four students) (see Table 1). The school counselor approached each student who was eligible to transition at the end of each semester and distributed parent/guardian consent forms. Of the 17 students who returned to comprehensive schools during the study period, 9 consented to participate in the study.

Table 1. Student participant demographics and characteristics.

Student	Grade during transition semester	Race	Gender^a	FRPL qualified?	School attended prior to phoenix	School attended after phoenix	Reason for phoenix assignment	Ever retained?	Semesters at phoenix	Times interviewed
Isaiah	8	Black	M	Yes	Harriet Middle	Harriet Middle	Public intoxication	Yes	1	2
Jamey	8	Black	M	Yes	Character Development Middle	Boyd Middle	Referrals	No	4	2
Jonathan	9	White	M	Yes	Carter Middle	Lakeview High	Drug possession and use	Yes	4	3
Kendrick	9	Black	M	Yes	Harriet Middle	Minington High	Referrals	Yes	Less than 1	3
Markesha	8	Black	F	Yes	Hammock Middle	Hammock Middle	Battery of school employee	Yes	Less than 1	2
Nalaria	9	Black	F	Yes	Hammock Middle	Jefferson High	Battery of school employee	Yes	1	3
Paul	8	Black	M	Yes	Morrison Middle	Morrison Middle	Referrals	Yes	1.5	2
Shaunika	8	Black	F	Yes	Hollyhock Middle	Hollyhock Middle	Referrals	No	1	2
Tenisha	8	Black	F	Yes	Morrison Middle	Morrison Middle	Referrals	Yes	2	3

^a We did not ask students about their gender identities. Here, we list the gender recorded on school documents, which may or may not reflect students’ self-identified gender(s).

Data collection

Data collection included interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis (see Table 2). When possible, we interviewed students before they left Phoenix, when they first returned to a comprehensive school, and after completing their transition semester. Each student interview lasted between 20 and 45 min. Students were asked about their academic, social, and emotional experiences at both Phoenix and at the comprehensive school with a particular focus on comparing and contrasting the two and discussing their views of their transition. Administrators and teachers at Phoenix and at each comprehensive school were interviewed for 20–60 min regarding each student’s transition. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis. Classroom observations were conducted in at least two of the students’ academic classes when possible and consisted of one 50-min observation per class during which field notes were recorded that reflected students’ interactions with teachers and peers. These observations were used as secondary data sources to complement information gleaned during interviews, allowing us to triangulate sources and increase the trustworthiness of our interpretations of the data (Lincoln and Guba 1985).

Table 2. Data sources used in addition to student interviews.

Location	Educator Interviews		Classroom observations	Documents
Phoenix	Staff^a	5	2	Student Work	2
Comprehensive Secondary Schools	Administrators and Counselors	11	N/A	Student Cumulative Records	7
				Student Work	5
	Teachers	16	16	Current Grades	7
				Program Information	5
				Email Correspondence	3
Total		32	18		29

^a Job titles are masked for anonymity due to small sample size.

Data analysis

To analyze these data, we combined narrative and case study approaches. We began by writing case narratives of the transition experiences of our nine participants and conducted an ‘analysis from the stance of the hermeneutic circle’ (Josselson 2011, 228), meaning that we looked at the whole case, then more closely at each of its parts with a particular focus on areas of tension within the case, and finally back at the whole case again in order to form a ‘Gestalt.’ Specifically, we followed these steps based on Josselson’s (2011) narrative analysis method. First, we coded the source materials using codes that we determined beforehand based on our theoretical framework and research questions as well as codes that emerged as we read the data. After coding, we read through the reports for each code and wrote a first draft of our impression of each student’s transition experiences. As we wrote these accounts, we kept a separate description of the tensions and contradictions that existed in the case. Josselson’s (2011) use of the hermeneutic circle to write a narrative incorporates the use of these tensions to create a more comprehensive understanding and representation of the case. After listing the tensions and contradictions, we returned to the code reports to examine how we might explain these tensions in a way that was consistent with the rest of the case. In resolving these tensions, we prioritized the portrayal of students’ perspectives in keeping with the tenets of CRT and to counter the master narrative (Solórzano and Yosso 2002). After completing each counternarrative² , we conducted a cross-case analysis to examine students’ common experiences with institutional oppression (Yin 2003). We were then able to distribute copies of the stories to two of the participants with whom we continued to communicate, who affirmed that we had captured their stories well.

Findings

Students both perceived and faced injustices regarding their phoenix placements

Students primarily described their placements at Phoenix as unjust. Most of them did not believe that their behaviors warranted removal from their schools. Conditions under which educators assigned students to Phoenix varied, and students protested the subjective nature of these assignments. As documented in existing school discipline literature (Skiba et al. 2002, 2011), students in this study were assigned to Phoenix for both subjective offenses (e.g. defiance) and objective offenses (e.g. dress code, drug possession). We also found that students could be assigned for ‘major’ offenses, such as being in one fight in which someone was injured. While these definitions seem mutually exclusive, we found that defining all types of infractions depended upon educator subjectivity, and exclusionary discipline was not applied uniformly to the students in this study.

Educators’ subjectivity in assigning discipline referrals

Jamey, Kendrick, Paul, Shaunika, and Tenisha were assigned to Phoenix for a history of office referrals. While they sometimes acknowledged behaving in ways that they knew broke school rules, they disagreed with educators’ decisions to assign them to Phoenix. The district had no system-wide guideline that identified which behaviors merited office referrals, which interventions had to be implemented with students who demonstrated need, and how fidelity to those interventions should be documented. Nor did the schools or district have a policy regarding how many office referrals merited a referral to Phoenix, which caused confusion and frustration among students. Kendrick stated, ‘I never should’ve had to go there. I only had 13 referrals. You have to have 15, and I didn’t.’ Each teacher had a subjective perspective regarding behaviors that should be ‘written up,’ and students were at a disadvantage if they had a teacher that wrote numerous referrals. For example, Assistant Principal Aarons examined Tenisha’s referral history and recounted, ‘in sixth grade, she had 19 referrals … she had over 10 from one class, uh “defiance,” “abusive language,” “unsafe acts,” so it looks like [she and the teacher are] having a personality issue.’ This participant also explained that Tenisha received a referral for bullying which had been coded incorrectly, because bullying had not actually occurred.

The act of interpreting and coding referrals, which determines how incidents get recorded on students’ permanent records and informs future educators’ perceptions of the students, depends completely on the judgment of the person writing and reading the referral. Tenisha’s case suggests that if students have a poor relationship with a teacher who chooses to write them up once, that teacher is likely to continue the pattern, which, in this case, ultimately led to the student’s exclusion from school. Although the district required educators to implement some type of intervention with students like Tenisha who collected many behavioral referrals, Ms. Aarons admitted, ‘We try to do interventions, but often those don’t really happen.’ The role of educators’ biases in assigning subjective referrals was suspected by students as well as by some educators. One Phoenix educator underscored the role of institutional racism in students’ assignments to the school. She stated:

I am concerned about the disproportionate number of Black males that come here … racism, generally speaking in this country. You know, I have two sons myself, Black males, and they’re not advancing the way they need to. Let’s put it that way.

Educators’ acceptance of these disproportionate outcomes and willingness to accept the school exclusion of Black students even when interventions had not been tried shows how these students are dehumanized. The system endorses exclusion without requiring educators to address students’ needs, thereby institutionalizing dehumanization while employing ideological racelessness by blaming individual students despite the clearly racialized implications of these practices.

Educators’ subjectivity in identifying ‘objective’ offenses

Students assigned to Phoenix due to ‘major,’ or objectively determined, offenses also experienced injustice related to their assignment to Phoenix; these offenses turned out not to be as objective as the code of conduct might indicate. For instance, Nalaria, who was sent to Phoenix for striking an adult during a fight with another student, explained, ‘That was my first time I was in trouble in eighth grade. And I tried my hardest to stay out of trouble. And it wasn’t even my fault.’ She continued, ‘[I just] made that one mistake,’ and stated she was not trying to hit the adult, only defend herself. She said she felt she deserved to be suspended and to ‘take some days’ but that a placement at Phoenix was not justified. Isaiah, who had a history of referrals but was sent to Phoenix after coming to school intoxicated, stated: ‘I just felt like [my placement at Phoenix] was too much. Too much. Before I was sent there, I had a 10-day suspension [as a consequence for the offense]. It was too much of a consequence.’ Again, we see the dehumanization and adultification of both students as well as the resulting school exclusion that leads to the discipline gap.

Educators’ subjectivity in determining when students could leave Phoenix

Students could leave Phoenix at administrators’ discretion after they had moved up at least one level in the school’s tiered point system. However, decisions about who could leave and when seemed capricious, and educators disagreed about individual students’ readiness to leave. For example, one Phoenix teacher stated:

I think Isaiah’s probably going to have greatest challenge [when he returns to a comprehensive school] … I usually don’t make a suggestion [to return a student who has not advanced two levels] but my fear was if he stayed out here, he was going to start to hang out with people that were going to get him in more trouble and start to develop and lose that quality that I liked about him.

Counselor Small affirmed, ‘Isaiah was a goofball, classic not motivated. Even when he left he wasn’t all that motivated, just wasn’t misbehaving … or popping up as much as a problem.’ These educators were not considering Isaiah’s academic preparation for success or even requiring a consistent demonstration of particular behaviors from him prior to reinstatement, indicating that decisions made regarding student placements remained at the whim of educators. Students’ collective experiences both with placements to and from Phoenix justified their perceptions that their fates were determined in biased and seemingly capricious ways that did not prioritize their well-being. These educators exercised significant power in determining students’ educational futures and could have directed that power toward restoring students to educational communities rather than excluding them. Instead, these students were treated as expendable when educators did not prioritize their academic and social success. Individual educators used color-blind discourse to attribute disparate outcomes to individual students’ decisions and actions while downplaying educators’ own power and participation in the marginalization of these students.

All students faced school-related barriers to post-placement success

After students successfully completed their stays at Phoenix, they looked forward to a fresh start. However, students were less successful during the transition semester than they anticipated. For most of the students, their grades either stayed the same or declined during that semester. We noted that those who stabilized or improved academically during their transition had also matured developmentally, having proceeded through the instability of early adolescence faced by all children. Most frequently, students experienced school policies and educator practices that served to further disadvantage, rather than support, them.

Detrimental school and course placement decisions

Upon their return to comprehensive schools, students, parents, and educators had to make decisions about appropriate school and course placements. Some of the students wanted to return to different schools than the one that sent them to Phoenix, a common practice in other districts, and one that would be quite feasible in Limestone County due to its extensive bussing of students to magnet programs county-wide. However, no attention was given to optimizing students’ post-Phoenix placements, and educators did not consider how Limestone’s bussing system could facilitate success among these students who were deemed unworthy of extra resources. Markesha, Paul, Shaunika, and Tenisha all wanted to attend different comprehensive schools when they returned, and Markesha and Paul submitted official zoning exemptions to the district office. However, both exemptions were denied. In an informal conversation, the zoning exemption officer stated that he had no way of knowing from the applications who was transferring from Phoenix or that the reason for their application was so that they could get a fresh start. Consequently, he was unable to advocate for these students in his placement decisions.

Paul, Jonathan, and Tenisha were all placed in online classes³ due to the lack of availability of face-to-face classes at their rural schools. Although both schools did have face-to-face sections of courses, considerations were not made regarding the importance of placing students newly returning from Phoenix into a class with a teacher present. Paul and Tenisha struggled to complete their online sections. Jonathan, 16 years old and two grade levels behind his same-age peers, did well academically in his online classes, which comprised four out of six of his assigned classes. However, Dean Springer, unaware of Jonathan’s class schedule in spite of having been assigned to Jonathan as his mentor, expressed concern at Jonathan’s apparent social isolation. Students’ class placements reflected a pervasive lack of educators’ consideration of providing supportive and successful academic and social experiences. Although students needed adult guidance to engage in and succeed at their courses, they received little.

Students’ most successful post-transition experiences seemed to be in face-to-face classes with students of diverse skill levels and abilities. Markesha’s science class, taught by an experienced teacher, consisted of activities demanding high levels of engagement, had a quick pace, and was characterized by high academic press (i.e. pushing students toward academic mastery) (Sweetland and Hoy 2000). This teacher also had a high opinion of Markesha, and Markesha named her as her favorite teacher. Markesha did not have a high grade in this class, but she worked diligently, asked for help, and expressed pride in her work. Tenisha’s math teacher could be characterized similarly and maintained a high and optimistic opinion of all of her students. She taught ‘bell to bell’ and offered instructional support when needed. Tenisha still struggled to stay focused in this class, but spoke positively of her experiences with this teacher.

Inadequate pedagogy

Limestone’s lack of consideration and planning for students’ post-transition success unnecessarily exposed students to adverse conditions upon their return. Students were tracked into the same levels of classes they had been in previously, with those scoring low on state reading and math tests being placed in intensive courses with other students who also had low scores. These courses were routinely taught by the least experienced teachers and often consisted of students spending much time off task. Paul and Tenisha had the same reading teacher upon their returns to Morrison, which occurred during two different semesters. Although their teacher shared their cultural background and was a member of the community, she provided little academic press and often did not come to work. Three separate attempts were made to observe Tenisha during this class, and the teacher was absent each time. An aide supervised the class, which was not in compliance with the law requiring a licensed teacher to be in the room, and students socialized during the period. During the observation of Paul in this class, students read a nonfiction passage aloud, though many lost focus. Much of the period was spent on teacher redirection and chastising. Students were given a multiple choice quiz at the end of the reading; most performed poorly, correcting their wrong answers as the teacher read the right ones. These courses were also disproportionately composed of students of color, again reflecting the racialized dehumanization of educational practices that institutionalized students’ intellectual languishing rather than maximizing their academic potentials.

In Markesha’s intensive reading class across town, Ms. Franz struggled to gain control of the class, composed almost exclusively of students of color in spite of their small population at the school. Markesha’s other teachers saw in her a focused, hard worker who tolerated no nonsense from peers. They said that she returned to Hammock from Phoenix with academic deficits and a lack of confidence but that she regained her balance during that semester. But Ms. Franz struggled with Markesha’s behavior both before and after her placement at Phoenix, stating that she needed to be ‘liberated from Markesha’s [bad behavior].’ Markesha, however, stated, that she struggled with reading as well as with staying focused and that she felt depressed when she failed. Ms. Franz overlooked these facts and seemed overwhelmed by a class of energetic Black students with low reading skills. Rather than examining her own instructional deficits, Ms. Franz spent class time conducting discussion circles where students talked about their behavior and made covenants to behave better.

In Isaiah’s intensive reading classes, the uncertified teacher also struggled with the basics of classroom management while Isaiah sat silently in the corner completing bookwork that he found boring but had to complete due to the class’ ‘bad behavior.’ Isaiah’s intensive math teacher intimidated the children by talking loudly and sternly at them and running the class with military precision. Of Isaiah’s performance, this teacher stated, ‘There is very little to judge it by. He mostly just sits.’ These teachers’ approaches reflected new racism in that they subscribed to the myth of meritocracy by attributing students’ challenges to students’ individual bad choices while responding with color-blindness to the racialized academic tracking that relegated poor performing students of color to classes with inexperienced or hostile teachers. In these classes, students were sure not to receive the academic interventions necessary for them to remain viable participants in the educational system.

Surveillance and discrimination

Being in a mixed ability class, though, did not promise success either. Nalaria’s English teacher succeeded in offering a rigorous curricular experience in a structured environment, but his relationship with Nalaria seemed strained. During a 50-min observation, he did not interact with her at all regarding academic content and corrected her behavior twice. Nalaria earned low grades in all of her classes despite receiving high praise for both her academic and social deportment from Phoenix teachers. Neither did Tenisha have solely positive experiences in mixed ability classes. In fact, her experiences with Mr. Malgemacht, her social studies teacher, exposed the racialized experiences students faced in their schools. Although the school tracked academic classes by students’ prior academic performance, this class was a mix of mostly White honors⁴ students and mostly Black regular track students because the school did not have a large enough student body to fill one section of each. Mr. Malgemacht maintained a particularly low opinion of Tenisha, stating that she focused too much on boys, and was unaware that Tenisha was grappling with her sexual orientation. He placed Tenisha off to the side of the room and stated that the most efficient way to deal with her was to write office referrals. Tenisha noticed that she was treated differently than other students in the class. We had this exchange about Mr. Malgemacht:

TENISHA:

Every time I ask to go somewhere he don’t let me, but if Layla or Skylar [White honors students] they want to go somewhere he would let them.

INTERVIEWER:

Mm-hmm. And why do you think there’s a difference?

TENISHA:

Uh, truly because of my race.

INTERVIEWER:

What kinds of differences do you see in how teachers treat kids of different races?

TENISHA:

Um, Black kids cannot answer the phone in his class, but White kids can …. and if we be loud and start talking and get in a group he would send us back to our seat. But if they do then they just stay in a group and stay talking.

Mr. Malgemacht’s unwillingness to allow Black students to congregate may indicate an adultified view of these students as potentially dangerous, a view that is clearly racialized since Mr. Malgemacht reacts differently to groups of White students. Tenisha perceived the presence of racial discrimination in this class and believed that she should have had more Black teachers. Other students pointed out the lack of Black educators in their schools as well. Both Kendrick and Isaiah asserted the desire to have more Black teachers.

Interacting with a Black educator, however, also did not ensure students’ success. We noted the low level of academic rigor in Tenisha and Paul’s reading class as well as in Paul’s math class, which were both taught by Black teachers. We also noted that Black administrators had pervasive deficit perspectives, engaged the myth of meritocracy, and disregarded the role of institutional racism in these students’ situations. For example, Dean Smith attributed Tenisha’s lack of success to her disposition, stating, ‘It’s just her attitude with her.’ Assistant Principal Green, after speaking proudly of the historical role of the school in the Black community, noted that Isaiah was ‘falling through the cracks’ because ‘he doesn’t seem to put forth the effort.’ Dean O’Connell, after being confronted by Jamey about wanting to return to school rather than being suspended, doubled the number of days of Jamey’s suspension to 10, the maximum number allowed by law. Even though students desired to see more educators who looked like them and understood them, the Black educators with whom they interacted also acted in ways that ultimately dehumanized and adultified students of color.

Students also felt that they were labeled by both White and Black educators after their returns to Phoenix. During her first interview after returning from Phoenix, Shaunika explained how the school resource officer and administrators targeted her for any small behavioral infractions. She stated, ‘They just don’t like me. I came from an alternative school.’ Shaunika’s perception of educators’ lack of support was also reflected in students’ class placements and access to credit recovery programs. The institutional barriers faced by students during their transitions resulted in only one of the nine participants feeling that the future looked promising after the transition semester.

Pressure to ‘fly below the radar’

Educators at both Phoenix and comprehensive schools emphasized students’ behavioral compliance as more important than their academic achievement or social-emotional development, creating explicit and implicit incentives for kids to stay unnoticed. Educators and students both expressed a need for students to ‘fly below the radar,’ or stay invisible rather than stand out as someone who demanded attention. For instance, Phoenix Counselor Small positively described Paul as someone who ‘did not get on anybody’s radar screen too bad.’ For students, this desire to stay invisible translated into a reluctance to ask for academic or emotional assistance. In Jonathan’s final interview, we discovered that his mother was in the hospital, his father was away on a trucking trip, and he was living alone. We asked if he had connected with any administrators, knowing that the dean was assigned as his mentor. Jonathan replied, ‘Not really. I try to avoid them, honestly. I just wanna stay under the radar.’

Markesha struggled academically upon her return to Hammock. Her teachers noted that she had become further behind during her semester at Phoenix and wondered why she did not ask for help. During her interview with us at the beginning of her transition semester, Markesha stated that she liked her English teacher because she was helping her, but then said:

I’m not doing good in math class. She comes to ask me what’s wrong and why I’m not participating, but I didn’t tell her I didn’t know how to do it. I just told her I forgot to do my homework. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her. I guess I was … I don’t know why.

We suspected that she feared having an experience similar to Shaunika’s, who felt targeted due to her Phoenix placement.

How racialized discourses and practices maintain an under class

The examination of the educational experiences of adolescents transitioning from Phoenix back to comprehensive public schools reveals the deleterious consequences of a dysfunctional relationship between Blackness and the educational discipline system. The dehumanization of these Black adolescents (or those who embodied the perceived characteristics of constructed Blackness, such as Jonathan) spurred educators’ adultification of them. Educators’ focus on behavioral compliance and lack of attention to students’ academic performance arguably contributed to students’ educational deaths and mediated their invisibility, a pattern that continued upon their return to comprehensive schools, when the students occupied an ‘outsider-within’ status (Collins 1998). After their transitions, students were physically present and under heavy surveillance, yet they were excluded from consideration for academic, social, and behavioral supports necessary for success. Educators expected this invisibility and students perceived it as the only form of existence they could occupy without punishment. Additionally, many teachers regarded them negatively, or not at all; this pedagogical disregard was consistent across educators’ racial and cultural backgrounds.

Teachers’ color-blind applications of the myth of meritocracy allowed them to blame and sanction individual students in ways that institutionalized distinctly racialized outcomes. We assert that these actions, both conscious and subconscious, reflect pernicious systemic biases that become subsumed within national and international social orders to continually maintain a racialized ‘second class.’ In examining the new racial caste system created through the mass incarceration of Black and Brown bodies, Alexander (2012) describes this undercaste as comprised of second-class citizens who have been permanently prohibited by custom and policies from participation in mainstream society. Until recently, the maintenance of this second class has supported a neoliberal global economic order.

The discourse of safety and neoliberal racism

The discourse of safety has been enacted as part of neoliberal ideology that functions at the intersection of race, age, and punishment (Kennedy-Lewis 2014). Neoliberal values promote education to support the labor force through a sophisticated sorting system tailor-made to reproduce existing societal inequities (Giroux 2008; Lipman 2011). Educators’ coding of student behaviors as unruly provides criteria by which students are fitted for their occupational positions in society. Students who are non-compliant are implicitly labeled as non-productive trouble-makers, and as such, are explicitly pushed into a form of schooling designed for a subjugated citizenry (Giroux 2008). Student behavior deemed challenging by educators justifies exclusionary discipline policies intended to punish and contain unsuccessful students who are likely to be non-consumers in the neoliberal marketplace (Kennedy-Lewis 2014). Students of color are particularly targeted as non-consumers through acts of neoliberal racism (Giroux 2008). Giroux (2008) describes neoliberal racism as a particularly pernicious form of new racism that effectively removes any discussion of the public good from the collective citizenry by defining the goals of the state in purely economic terms and defining the role of the citizen as a self-interested consumer rather than as a socially focused, democratic participant. Educators in this study frequently participated in practices that systematically ensured the educational failure and social exclusion primarily of students of color without mentioning race or positioning themselves as agents of change.

The color-blind nature of the discourse of safety evolves under populist nationalism

Although the caste of second-class citizenship has been maintained under neoliberalism through a colorblind discourse of safety, we are now witnessing a globalizing shift from neoliberal to populist nationalist discourse in which the discourse of safety explicitly targets members of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. The rise of populist nationalism ostensibly challenges the neoliberal economic order while reinforcing, and even heightening, racialized marginalization of an under-class. For instance, as the current US governmental administration promises renewed economic prosperity for struggling Whites, immigrants, Muslims, and groups positioned as ‘other’ are experiencing increased demonization and diminished rights, freedom, and safety. Populist nationalism perpetuates a ‘colored’ second class while re-establishing the dominance of the White lower class that lost economic dominance in a neoliberal hierarchy. Neoliberal racism is yielding to the more overt and explicit marginalization of people of color in the US and Western Europe. While the discourse is shifting, the impacts continue to maintain a privileged class of Whites and an underprivileged class of ‘others.’ It is within this context that we consider how educators and concerned stakeholders can effectively resist these increased challenges to humane, democratic, and egalitarian approaches to educating students.

Mounting stealthy and sustained resistance

As our global community witnesses a rise in populist nationalism that seems to challenge neoliberalism and the version of racism that accompanies it, the US administration rolls out an educational agenda that will increase privatization of public education, further diminishing the ability and responsibility of the state to promote democracy and equity (Jessen 2017). Stealthy, persistent resistance is warranted. Such resistance can begin and be sustained at grass-roots levels in the context of broad and deep collaborations among communities, educators, and concerned citizens. Together, these stakeholders can carry out an agenda that prioritizes relational schools and pedagogical equity.

Relational schools

The promotion of a school-based form of resistance to such a large and powerful foe reflects the belief that bottom-up strategies coupled with caring and durable relationships among resisters can effect change (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012). In relational schools, the social, emotional, and psychological needs of students and teachers are prioritized (Kennedy 2008; Nelson 2016). Rather than experiencing dehumanization and adultification, students engage in culturally appropriate pedagogical endeavors within a context of supportive relationships with adults. Adults use trauma-informed care in their interactions with students, recognizing that institutional racism and poverty can result in complex trauma that has deleterious effects on student learning and behavior (Morgan et al. 2015). In relational schools, educators are empowered to treat each other with such care as well (Riley 2011). When members of the school commit infractions that harm the community, educators respond with restorative and inclusive, rather than punitive and exclusionary, approaches (Morris 2016). Inclusive and restorative approaches challenge the discourse of safety in both its neoliberal and populist nationalist forms and move school communities toward equity.

An agenda of pedagogical equity

The development of relational schools should also incorporate an agenda of pedagogical equity. Pedagogical equity includes professional learning opportunities for teachers and administrators to develop a proactive vision and action plan that promotes educational equity and excellence for Black youth. Many educators have gained certification, advanced degrees and national teaching certification, yet are not knowledgeable of how to promote positive student outcomes for Black children in ways that do not jeopardize the well-being of Black children and communities (Allen 2015). These learning experiences include opportunities for educators not only to develop critical race perspectives about the educational issues affecting Black children, but also to develop cultural competence in teaching Black children well from an emic Black perspective.

Our focus on Black students does not presuppose that other racial groups do not experience exclusionary discipline policies and second-class citizenship in detrimental ways. In this study, second-class citizenship meant students were: more severely penalized than other students for misbehavior; unable to receive supports necessary for their success; and either invisibilized or under the heavy surveillance of administrators. More research is needed to examine the experiences of other students whose multiple identities make them susceptible to intersectional oppression. With the recent rise of populist nationalism, we are particularly concerned about educators’ treatment of Muslim students and handling of anti-immigrant sentiment in schools. Future studies should focus on the impacts of populist nationalism on student marginalization as well as successful pockets of resistance where schools and communities enact liberatory practices despite the globalization of xenophobia and disregard for the human toll of second-class citizenship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms, and sources of descriptive statistics masked to protect anonymity. Additional measures were taken to mask identities in the narratives.

2. The collection of counternarratives totaled 36 single-spaced pages, which could not be included here due to space limitations but is available upon request.

3. In this context, online classes were those with pre-determined academic content that the student completed independently in a virtual environment with periodic phone or face-to-face support from the certified teacher who facilitated the course.

4. In US schools, students can take courses with more demanding academic content if they meet certain qualifications. In some systems, students are grouped based on tests and performance, and the entire group, called ‘honors students’ or ‘gifted,’ is assigned to advanced courses throughout students' educations. Regardless of course enrollment procedures, honors courses are disproportionately composed of White, middle- and upper-class students despite evidence that other students can achieve equally well in these courses when they receive adequate support (Conchas 2006; Oakes and Lipton 1990).