The Manufacture of a School Reconstitution: Counternarrating the Master Narrative of a “Failing” School

• In Event: The New Educational Structures of Neoliberalism: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Charter Schools and Other “School Choice” Arrangements

Abstract

Berliner and Biddle (1995) argue that since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 media have assisted in creating a “manufactured crisis” (p. 4) about America’s public schools in order to scapegoat educators, push favored reforms, and divert attention from societal problems, such as poverty, systemic racism, and declining economic growth, particularly in urban areas. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act functions as the latest articulation of this false crisis (Granger, 2008).

Utilizing the theoretical lenses of master narrative theory (Lyotard, 1984), critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman 1988), this qualitative research project employed a type of critical discourse analysis known as the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009) to unmask the mainstream media’s narrative, or dominant story, about Victory High School, a large high school in Los Angeles that was recently reconstituted under the NCLB Act. Findings revealed a racialized discourse about economic competition and vilification of community members.

The study relied on purposive sampling, convenience sampling and nomination processes to identify 12 community elders, teachers, and alumni from the Victory High School community. Individual interviews and focus group interviews with participants revealed how the enactment of numerous educational reforms by local, state, and federal policy and laws destabilized and fragmented a once close knit school community, producing a loss of trust in the school as an institution of public good and destroying the community’s history, cultural memory, and social capital. Participants’ counter narratives illustrated how media manufactured a crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1985) about Victory High School in order to scapegoat community members, obfuscate shifts in economic opportunities, and advance neoliberal educational reforms, such as reconstitution, against this working class community of color.

This study had numerous implications for the participants, Victory High School community, mainstream media, and the field of education research. Participants indicated that their participation in this project built community, challenged master narratives and the interests they protect, and cultivated the community’s shared history (Yosso, 2006). For the Victory High School community, this project functioned as a recuperative effort to capture the history of the community in a way that previously had never been done and to align that history to larger political, social, and economic factors. Also, this study illustrated how mainstream media coverage about a school protects economic and social hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) in the United States and offered new media technologies as potential sites of resistance to begin to counter narrate the effects of mainstream media master narratives.

In terms of the field of education research, this study’s theoretical framework of critical race theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman 1988) contributed to an ongoing academic discourse about how to understand race and class in the United States. Additionally, this study explored the effects of neoliberal educational reform efforts, such as reconstitution, and the interests protected by these reform efforts, which are being used increasingly across the United States (Ravitch, 2010).

Author

• Beth Trinchero, University of California – Los Angeles