Race-Based Discipline Disparities and Discourse: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Trump Administration's School Safety Report

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Racialization, Silence, and Commodified Bodies: Policy and Discourse in Context

Abstract

This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to understand how the Trump administration is discursively undermining research and practice working to close the well-documented, race-based discipline gap in U.S. public schools. Chapter 8 of the Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety (2018) is the focus of this analysis as it outlines the Trump administration’s position on school discipline. This paper finds that the Trump administration’s school safety narrative is based on local control and race-neutrality in an attempt to delegitimize the race-conscious suggestions made by the Obama administration in 2014. The work of practitioners and scholars developing racially equitable discipline policies is at risk if the narrative presented by the Trump Administration is not adequately confronted.

Author

• Neha Sobti, New York City Department of Education