Public Educational Policy as Performance: A Queer Analysis

• In Event: 52.034 - Doing Critical Policy Analysis in Education

Abstract

Educational communities and policy systems within the US are located on rapidly shifting terrain in terms of inclusion and equity for queer persons in society. Sears’ (1993) observation over two decades ago that queer persons in public schools have been relegated to the status of invisible minority remains steadfastly accurate in some contexts and decidedly interrupted in others. A recent acceleration of federal judicial rulings affirming legalization of “gay marriage” as a matter of equal rights portends a (not too distant) future in which school districts and educational policy will be legally mandated to ensure that differences involving sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression do not lead to limitations in educational equity and access. This process involves extending protective policies aimed at establishing a (minimally) safe environment to inclusive policies that create an authentically equitable environment for queer youth, staff, and families in public educational settings (Author, 2013; Goodman, 2005; Koschoreck & Slattery, 2010). Arguably, a significant portion of local, state, and federal educational policies currently fail in this regard. Engaging media representations as a unit of analysis, this paper maps the public process through which LGBTIQ protective and inclusive policies have been negotiated within select Texas school districts. Conducted through a queer theoretical lens, this critical analysis interrogates heterosexuality as a frequently privileged and compulsory construct in educational policy development that depends on the “closet,” understood as codes of knowing and not knowing, for its own representational needs (Pinar, 1998; Sedgwick, 1990). This analysis becomes a context for theorizing both certain districts’ willingness to avoid queer protective and/or inclusive policies, even in light of documented increased exposure to victimization and harassment encountered by queer youth (Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, & Bartkiewicz, 2010), as well as other districts’ capacity for systematically equitable leadership. Finally, the paper explores queer theory’s value as an intellectual tool for problematizing and interrupting normalizing assumptions inscribed in specific educational policies that have the material effect of fostering inequity across multiple manifestations of difference.

Authors

• Michael Patrick O'Malley, Texas State University

• Tanya Alyson Long, Texas State University