The Shifting Political Winds: LGBTQ Students, Educational Policy and Politics, and the Dilemmas Confronting Street-Level Bureaucrats

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Diversity and District Dilemmas: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Difference

Abstract

There has been a veritable sea change in how how LGBTQ youth have been viewed by the US general public since 2003. Attitudes have slowly moved from dangerously hostile to increasingly supportive. That said, LGBTQ youth attending public schools remain at risk for bullying, harassment and physical violence.

This developing paper, a conceptual case study focused on the Anoka Hennepin School District, attempts to tease out these currents in educational policy and politics vis-à-vis LGBTQ students by employing one lens from the politics of education literature: street level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010). Given the shifting political winds regarding LGBTQ identity and educational policy, teasing out whose understandings of policy are actually implemented is critical for the well-being of LGBTQ students.

Authors

• Jason Murphy, Rutgers University

• Catherine A. Lugg, Rutgers University