“Under the Black Students’ Gaze”: Centering Youth Who are Racially Marginalized in Building an Assessment of Schools’ Instructional Climate

• In Event: Dismantling Conclusive Blackness: Countering the Deterministic Role That Assessment Plays in K–12 Education

Abstract

Historically, schools have used a color-blind lens to monitor and track students’ sense of socioemotional, physical safety and quality of instruction in U.S. K-12 classrooms. This lens of racial neutrality negates how white bodies in white spaces and whiteness informs measures of safety and instruction. Consequently, schools are not in a position to accurately measure the socioemotional safety and quality of instruction for students most racially marginalized in K-12 schools. Currently, the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (Guo et al., 2011), a widely adopted assessment in use in public schools, includes race and other social identities as demographic descriptors then offers a subscale designed to assess a school’s celebrations of cultural diversity. The current criticism of such climate measures is the continuous negation of the inherent racism that permeates the U.S. education system (e.g., Byrd, 2017). Additionally, many adopted school climate measures do not assess covert racism and its adverse effects on the learning of racially marginalized students. DeCuir-Gunby and Schutz’ (2014) “race-imaging” has led educational psychologists and other education-focused researchers to move toward measures of school climate that 1) center the experiences and meaning-making of youth and communities who are racially marginalized in education, and 2) examine more systematic racism beyond racial discrimination. These race-focused measures aim to assess youth’s access to safe and quality learning environments given the insidious nature of racism in the U.S. Centering the Black student gaze in school climate assessments becomes critical to position constructs like safety and instruction from those who have been the most marginalized racially in K-12 classrooms. It is from this panoramic view that the solutions to racial inequity are responsive and systemic. In the current paper, we discuss the creation of the CACS for 3rd-6th grade students. Based in a grounded theory framework wherein Black parents and researchers identified six elements needed in learning environments that support the healthy development of Black children (BLIND, 2021), the CACS centers not only Black parents but those of racially marginalized youth. Now in its second iteration, the CACS has been piloted as a diagnostic tool for public, charter, and private schools to identify areas of professional development based on Black students’ and Black parents’ experiences and wisdom.

Authors

• Amber Majors Ladipo, Village of Wisdom

• Dawn X. Henderson, Village of Wisdom