A Superintendent's Story: Rivertown Challenges Racial Inequities in Schools

• In Event: 16.061 - Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: 16.061-4 - Community-Based Interventions to Disrupt Racially Disproportionate School Discipline in an Urban School District

Abstract

This paper will use the methodological framework of community-based participatory action research (Swantz, 2008) and the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory (CRT) and critical whiteness theory (CWS) to provide an analysis of the ways that key actors in the Rivertown City School District frame the district’s problems in ways that consistently downplay race even in the face of data that clearly show the racialized nature of disciplinary practices in the district. Drawing primarily on a first-hand qualitative narrative from the former district superintendent who was brought in to transform the organizational culture of the school system, the paper will use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to deconstruct the ways that the district’s problems were defined in contested and contradictory ways by the existing leadership. The paper will include a description and analysis of the framework the superintendent used in her efforts to build a school-community-university collaboration, with implications for considering the complexity of introducing organizational change in a district characterized by colormuteness (Pollock, 2001).

Author

• Marion Martinez