How Black and Latino Parents Perceive Discipline at No-Excuses and Public Montessori Schools

• In Event: 72.021 - Learning From Ethnography: How We Make Change in Urban School Discipline

Abstract

Choice scholars have noted that urban parents of color struggle to effectively navigate complex choice systems (André-Bechely, 2005; Pattillo, 2015; Peréz, 2011; Rhodes & Deluca, 2014), but few scholars have examined how these parents feel about their children’s school choices after enrollment, particularly in the context of school discipline. We use the idea of a “conflicted fit” (Author, 2016) to illuminate the experience of black and Latino parents after their children enroll in two very different types of urban school choices, “no-excuses” charter schools and public Montessori schools. While no-excuses charter schools have gained public recognition for their academic achievement and strict disciplinary culture, public Montessori schools have been hailed for promoting student autonomy and racial diversity. How do parents experience these two very different choices?

We use a combination of participant-observation and 53 open-ended interviews with black and Latino parents. The first author conducted 18 months of fieldwork in a no-excuses middle school in a Northeastern city from 2012-2013, shadowing students and teachers almost every school day and attending parent meetings and parent-teacher conferences. The second author conducted a year of fieldwork in 2013-14 at two public Montessori schools in Hartford, Connecticut with follow-up visits at the second school in 2014-15. The second author attended parent meetings, and formal and informal parent gatherings. All schools serve a significant proportion of black and Latino students, ranging from two-thirds of students in the Montessori schools to almost the entire student body in the no-excuses school.
We find that at both schools, parents reflected thoughtfully on learning and disciplinary practices happening in their schools, contrasting findings by others that urban parents are primarily concerned with basic academic necessities (Deluca & Rhodes, 2014; Pérez, 2011). At the no-excuses school, parents appreciated the academic rigor but were conflicted over the school’s strict discipline and the lack of autonomy afforded their children. At the public Montessori schools, conversely, parents appreciated the social-emotional development and respect given to children, but were concerned about the level of academic rigor. These findings suggest that black and Latino parents want a middle way, taking the best of two very different systems, the academic rigor of no-excuses schools with the social development and autonomy of the public Montessori schools. At neither of these schools do most parents find an ideal fit even though they are told by school administrators that they are the ones making their school choices.

This paper makes a significant scholarly contribution by adding black and Latino parents’ voices to the debates over school discipline. We show that urban parents desire both autonomy and academic rigor for their students in much the same ways as suburban parents, adding nuance to previous research suggesting that some urban parents prefer strict schools (Calvo 2007). This is also the first paper to integrate qualitative data from these two popular urban charter school options, making use of the variation across cases to draw stronger conclusions.

Authors

• Joanne Golann, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College

• Mira C. Debs, Yale University

• Anna Weiss, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College