It Just Doesn't Add Up: Counterframes and Deconstructing the "Common Sense" of School Closures

• In Event: 35.077 - MTCC Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: 35.077-2 - Contesting Dominant Regimes of (Post-)Truth and Commonsense (Un)Knowing

Abstract

Mass school closures are now commonplace in urban school districts. System leaders often invoke a common frame that argues closures are an unavoidable, data-driven, and colorblind phenomenon in an educational landscape defined by budgetary shortfalls, demographic changes, and increased school choice. Research on school closures has typically focused on how communities tell counternarratives that seek to interrupt official accounts of school closures. Applying a critical frame analysis to interviews and documents from the 2013 school closure process in Washington, DC, I discuss another grassroots approach to disrupting school closures: counterframes. As a form of critical deconstruction, counterframes allow communities to directly challenge official discourse and also offer alternatives. The paper considers the relevance of counterframes to broader educational mobilization.

Author

• Esa Syeed, California State University - Long Beach