Mediating Dispossession: Perceptions, Practices, and Policies of Principals in Gentrified Contexts

• In Event: Struggling for Equity: A New Wave of Research on How Schools Respond to Gentrification

Abstract

Objective
The purpose of this study is to explore how elementary school principals perceive gentrification and consider how gentrification guides their practices as powerful education leaders. There is limited research that highlights the practices of principals within the context of gentrification although principals are key actors in the vertical and horizontal mediation of neoliberal policies (Khalifa, Dunbar & Douglas, 2013) and possibly the gentrification of their schools (Burns Stillman, 2012). Some researchers focus on gentrifying parents, extol the possibility of gentrification as a driving force of school integration, and posit the principal as crucial in sealing its success (Burns Stillman, 2012). Others center the experiences of poor and working class families of color and explore school leaders’ exclusionary or inclusionary policies (CIF, 2004). This interview study prioritizes the voice of principals and examines how they mediate various interests of their diverse school communities through the implementation of policies and practices that may increase or inhibit equitable possibilities.

Theoretical Framework
Drawing on Anderson’s (1990) Mediation Model this study focuses on race and its intersection with class to understand how principals’ perceptions of the displacement of poor people of color contextualizes their school-based policies and practices. Anderson suggests that principals engage in an often-veiled form of mediation that deals with “conflicts of interest.” These struggles are settled at the “symbolic” level in order to maintain organizational unity. Anderson (1990) states, “Through mediation in space and time, administrators help to maintain or “reproduce” the institutionalized meanings that are incorporated in the structures policies and practices of the organization” (p.47). This study attempts to illuminate the racialized “conflicts of interest,” the “meaning” principals give to the gentrification of their schools, and the subsequent policies and practices that stem from this meaning (Anderson, 1990, p.47).

Methods and Data
The study centers on interviews with two elementary school principals in gentrified neighborhoods of a mid Atlantic city. Both principals work in urban charter schools experiencing an influx of wealthier whiter families. I collect data through three, layered sixty-minute interviews that draw out the participant’s personal and educational history. Oral histories help me understand how principals "deeply embedded and largely unexamined assumptions about the social world” underpin their mediatory practices and responses to gentrification in their schools (Anderson, 1990, p.38).

Findings and Implications
Preliminary findings suggest that the principal’s organizational decisions, policies, and practices are informed by their early educational experiences and perceptions of gentrification. These early experiences influence the ways they mediate conflicts between the interest of existing families and the interest of new gentry families. Underpinned by a logic of resistance to oppression some principals have created safe spaces for lower-income families of color traditionally served by the school and gentrifying parents alike. Black female principals in particular mediate demographic change in ways that are easily woven into a “tradition” of Black womanist educators by creating a refuge for families (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002, p.71). However, the social reach of the refuge or safe space created by principals may be limited by gentrifying parents.

Author

• Chy McGhee, New York University