California Continuation High Schools: The Making of Alternative People in Alternative Contexts

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Reconsidering the Standard in Education

Abstract

This paper uses historical and archival data from the California continuation school system to trace the antecedents, birth, and evolution of alternative schools as places for “losers.” Beginning with the creation of the continuation system in 1919 and ending in 2016, we highlight four historical eras (1919-1965; 1966-1983; 1983-2003; 2004-2016) to show how the initial promise of what would formally become known as alternative education in the 1960s and 1970s, devolved into a convenient tool for the state management of challenging student populations today. It is within a long context of systematic neglect that continuation education teachers and administrators have reinforced or challenged the institution’s stigma and role in upholding the disposability of “unstudents.”

Authors

• Kyle Beckham, Stanford University

• Chrissy Hernandez, California State University - Monterey Bay