Secondary Discipline: How Parents Are Incorporated Into the Disciplinary Mission of Alternative Schools

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: The Politics of Punishment and Care

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data from a public grade 6-12 Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) in Texas, which are a product of zero tolerance education policies, this paper examines the extension of discipline aimed at DAEP students to their families. The findings suggest that DAEP rules subject families, in particular low-income black and Latina mothers, to what I term "secondary discipline," where they are drawn into the disciplinary regime of the program and subject to penal scrutiny. The analysis focuses on three disciplinary practices designed to uphold school order, but that actually operate as mechanisms for social control and to maintain inequalities: 1) Mandatory Parent/Student Orientation; 2) Night Classes; and 3) Mandatory and non-obligatory requests for parents meetings with DAEP staff.

Author

• Jessica L Dunning-Lozano, Ithaca College