"Say What They Want You to Say": Students' Interpretations of Success at One High-Achieving Charter

• In Event: Charter School Outcomes

Abstract

This paper explores structural characteristics, assumptions, and pedagogies that may contribute to the success or systematic failure of Black and Latinx students at a “no-excuses” charter school in a large urban district. Specifically, this phenomenological study highlights the ways in which Black and Latinx students interpret success in school as it is taken up and operationalized by a majority White teaching staff through their daily pedagogy and implementation of schoolwide policies. Students were assessed by purposeful observations, interviews, and focus-groups during a year-long situated ethnography with an analysis of students’ dispositions and actions. As discipline-focused public charters are replicated across the country due to purported student success, it is important to understand how success is interpreted and enacted by students.

Author

• L. Trenton S. Marsh, University of Central Florida