Considering the STEM Education Infrastructure in Memphis

• In Event: STEM as an Urban Equity Strategy: Memphis as a Microcosm

Abstract

STEM-focused schools are a well-established method of choice for school districts “to raise math and science achievement, improve economic competitiveness, increase job prospects for next-generation workers, and support greater opportunities for low-income and minority students” (Eisenhart et al., 2015, pp. 763–764). Mathematics and science academies and magnet schools have been around for a while with a recent surge in popularity given The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s (2010) recommendation to former President Barack Obama for 1,000 new STEM schools by 2020 and the incentive to create these schools provided through the Race to the Top initiative (Johnson, 2012). The challenge for meeting this mandate is building rigorous STEM schools in communities where resources are sparse. There is no pre-determined structural pathway to address this mandate; a STEM focus in schools can take on a variety of different characters. Therefore, school districts are left to develop their own plans. In urban districts, the mandate to build STEM-focused schools folds into the larger plans for urban renewal.
In the case of Memphis, Tennessee, recent STEM initiatives exemplify this attempt at urban renewal. The public education scene in Memphis can be described as a mess with district mergers and de-mergers, charter schools of all varieties, and the constant looming threat from the statewide takeover district. Amid this mess, Maxine Smith STEAM Academy (MSSA) opened in 2014 as a STEAM-focused optional (or selective) middle school in a building previously occupied by an all-Black middle school. The school policy requirement is that half of the students enrolled come from within the immediate attendance area while the other half of the population could come from across the district. Unlike community schools, however, MSSA was built from scratch, just as the neighborhood was becoming gentrified and increasingly white. The principal hand-selected a premier staff and they set out to build a new school community. Partnerships with local businesses and universities brought resources and technologies that were unlike any available throughout the district. These resources combined with a governance approach that represented a fresh start in a district mired in generations of race-based educational issues made MSSA an attractive choice for savvy parents. MSSA was such a success that the district sought to continue the selective STEM education pipeline by converting a nearby all-Black high school to a STEM focus and tapping the principal of MSSA to lead this new effort as principal.
In this paper, I use whiteness as property (Harris, 1993), a tenet of critical race theory to examine STEM education in Memphis as a case of urban STEM-based education reform. I describe claiming STEM schools and STEM curriculum as property as a two-phase process in which middle class whites in urban areas participate to secure STEM education by repurposing “failed” Black schools and to maintain it by institutionalizing selectivity. This paper will also provide a backdrop for the rest of the papers in this symposium by establishing for the audience a picture of STEM education in Memphis.

Author

• Erika C. Bullock, University of Wisconsin - Madison