Resegregation as Curriculum: The Meaning of the New Racial Segregation in U.S. Public Schools

• In Event: 61.039 - Researching School Segregation: Critical Race Theory, Qualitative Methodologies, and the Question of Making a Difference

Abstract

Objectives
This paper contributes to the growing body of research on the racial resegregation of U.S. K-12 schools (Donato & Hanson, 2012; Orfield & Yun, 2009; Reardon et al, 2012; Smrekar & Goldring, 2009; Wells et al, 2008). The existing literature documents how racial segregation is closely tied to class segregation and that this dual-segregation (Orfield et al, 2012) is highly correlated with school drop-out rates, low performance on achievement tests, and lower levels of career advancement and wealth accumulation. The proposed paper seeks to expand the range of outcomes considered in research on segregation to include documentation of more nuanced curricular effects on students’ personal identity, community affiliation, conceptions of citizenship, and social hope.

Theoretical Framework
The study reported upon draws on the tradition of research on hidden curriculum (Anyon, 1983; Giroux & Purpel, 1983; Jackson, 1968; Smith, 2013). It provides evidence that the “new” race and class segregation in our schools is meaningful to children and that it is communicating something problematic to them. The paper draws on Critical Race Theory conceptions of “counter-narratives” to justify the importance of listening to the oral testimony of persons on the receiving end of racial oppression in both legal and educational studies (Bell, 2009; Delgado & Stefancic, 2000; Dixson & Rousseau, 2014). This is supplemented with poststructuralist and pragmatist theories that help highlight the material and discursive conditions that enable and constrain resistance (Koopman, 2011; McKenna & Pratt, 2014).

Method of Inquiry
The study uses contemporary developments in qualitative research methodology, including the use of narrative and literary modes of representation in ethnographic and policy research (Hoffman & Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2002; Lightfoot, 2005; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Barone, 2001; Barone & Eisner, 2010; Eisner, 1988). These methods are increasingly used in the social sciences for describing often overlooked aspects of human experience as well as for motivating social and institutional change.

Data sources and methods
“Resegregation as Curriculum” reports on a ten-year field study of a school district where race and class segregation increased after its thirty year federal desegregation order was lifted. The research team conducted over 200 individual interviews and over 60 focus group interviews with students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members.

Results
This study finds that resegregation functioned as a form of hidden curriculum, one that generated feelings of isolation and reduced worth, an eroded sense of faith that adults have their best interests in mind, and an eroded sense of social hope for both black and white students. By any reasonable assessment, this curriculum is damaging both for individual children and our communities.

Scholarly Significance
The increasing race and class segregation in public schools is having enormous impact on the lives of millions of individual children and on their families. Additionally processes of resegregation erode our collective sense that as a nation we can sustain principled stands against obvious injustices. This paper expands the means by which scholars seek to support the efforts of activists, policy makers, and citizens to reverse this malignant trend.

Authors

• Jerry L. Rosiek, University of Oregon

• Kathleen M. Kinslow, The University of Alabama