Ago ... Ame ... A Call to Attention: Policy Implications and the Role of Black Teachers in Washington, D.C., 1996–2016

• In Event: 68.053 - Neoliberalism in Black Education: Research, Reform, Reproduction, and Resistance

Abstract

Ago and ame, from the Twi language of West Africa represents a call to attention (Ago) and a willingness to listen (ame). Today, the call is in honor of Black teachers. Over 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, many U.S. schools remain separate and unequal. Black teachers are still expressing a sense of disenfranchisement, including those in the nation’s capital, Washington DC. Since 2007, the District of Columbia has pursued one of the “most aggressive reform movement efforts of any unified district” (Osborne, 2015), which has, in turn, led to the dismantling of the Black teaching force. In fact, the Shaker Institute reported that White teachers more than doubled in size from 16% to 39% between 2003 and 2008 (Shanker Institute, 2015). Neoliberal policies such as the 1996 charter school reform movement and IMPACT, an acronym for the evaluation system created under then Chancellor Michelle Rhee, were two of many policies that laid the groundwork for the loss of community control and led to the decline in the Black teaching force.
Utilizing Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework, we conducted a document analysis on reform movement policies to examine the intended or unintended impact of the reform movement on the livelihood of DC public school Black teachers. Document analysis combines content analysis and thematic analysis to interpret a wide variety of document types (Bowen, 2009; Prior, 2003).
We found the following based on our analysis: First, there is a silencing around data, in general, and in particular a silencing about race as it relates to the impact of these reform policies on the teaching force. Second, we also noticed the common narrative positioning “Black teachers” as the culprits for an ill-performing school system and poor test scores. For example, we found that many of the documents, as framed by neoliberal reformers and other stakeholders, touted DCPS as a “failing system,” with “under enrolled schools,” and “teachers not being a good fit,” and these sentiments seemed to play on the concerns of parents and posit the Black teachers as the problem. Most importantly, language became important in who DCPS wanted to recruit. Consistently, we saw the administrators of DCPS articulating the desire for high quality teachers who could work with impoverished youth (Haynes, 2008). The assumption was that the current Black teaching force in DCPS was the cause of the failing system and that DCPS required a younger cohort of teachers to make the critical difference. We found that the removal of Black teachers was systematic. The use of “objective measures” like the evaluation system, IMPACT, and the closing of hundreds of neighborhood schools in Black communities using the language of “under-enrolled schools,” served to obscure the dismissal of thousands of teachers, mostly Black and female.
This work responds to important questions about the history of Black education in Washington, DC. and the effect of neoliberal policy on Black educators.

Authors

• Jenice Leilani View, George Mason University

• Rona M. Frederick, The Catholic University of America