Can Equity and Excellence Ever Coexist? African Americans and the Racial Politics of Expectations and Performance

• In Event: 61.024 - Interrogating Educational Leadership: Critical Research on White Privilege and Racism

Abstract

Summary
The purpose of this article is to critically examine the politics of school improvement aiming to promote racial equity in a highly diverse urban setting. By all measures, disparities in educational opportunities continue to persist across race and economic lines (Carter & Welner, 2013). These multiplicities of systemic problems have disproportionately impacted many African American students who attend schools in low-income communities (Howard, 2002). One of the inequities that have been heavily discussed in the media is the need to raise expectations in the classrooms. This is consistent with research that suggests systemic racism and racial attitudes of educators have much to do with the low academic expectations that students experience (Rist, 2000). Despite the current discourse on school improvement through externally imposed accountability measures, there is still a strong sense of disbelief among school personnel in the educability of African American students (Ladson-Billings, 2000). To add to this problem, the increased accountability has proven to be flawed in its ability to assist students towards a higher level of academic performance (Packer, 2007).
1. To investigate this issue further, this paper draws from an ethnographic case study that took place in Central High School in California with the following research questions:
How does Central High School’s equity-minded reform efforts create conditions to support higher academic expectations for low-income African American students?
2. How do these conditions of academic expectancies reinforce the notions of equity in the classroom?
3. What can the school do to further its equity agenda to ensure academic excellence is at the core of its school improvement plan?
This is a one-year study and data consists of observations of 22 African American students and 12 White teachers at a large comprehensive high school in California. Drawing from the work of racial formation theory (Omi & Winant, 1994), this study uses a two-part data analysis to understand ways academic expectations are articulated at the institutional level to illuminate ways racial politics keep the belief system and dynamics racial privileges and power intact. In effect, this structural analysis is coupled with in depth examinations of the classroom where teachers and students negotiate between the paradoxical expectations of college and pervasive stereotype of disbelief in low-income African American students’ intellectual capacities. At the institutional level, archival sources on the history of the school were analyzed through the interest convergence dilemma (Bell, 1979) to identify patterns and themes related to race and academic achievement. To understand racial inequities at the pedagogical level, inductive analysis of students and teachers interviews was employed to understand the racial dynamics of academic expectations and ideological conflicts between the notions of equity and excellence as separate constructs. This macro- and micro- analytical approach allows for the application of racial formation theory and interest convergence dilemma to examine how educators and students participate in the reinforcement of race as a predictor of academic achievement.

Author

• Daniel D Liou, Arizona State University