Are Discursive Practices That Manage Public School Shuttering Policy Indicia of Racial Discrimination?

• In Event: School Shuttering and the Fight for Black Public Educational Access, Improvement, and Protection

Abstract

In 2019, the governing board of St. Louis Public Schools, once one of the nation’s largest urban school districts, considered the permanent closure of eleven schools. Seven of the proposed eleven schools were located within the northern part of St. Louis and would disrupt the education of 85 percent of African American students (STLToday, 2019). The permanent closure of schools can indeed be a form of discrimination against the communities losing their educational cornerstone. Existing literature on school closure indicates school closure is merely one byproduct of shifting educational principles and an advancing bipartisan policy agenda, birthed from the era of test accountability and school choice (Brazil & Candipan, 2022; Lipman, 2014; Welner, 2013). Arguments in favor of school closure have hinged on space underutilization, fiscal preservation, and poor academic performance; however, racial, economic, and geographic inequities are also culprits (Gross, 2016; Han et al., 2017). The degree to which communities of color experience school closures is increasing (Ewing & Green, 2022) to such a degree that it has garnered the attention of the NAACP and the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Research on school closures reports varied, yet related themes within their findings. But the remote discursive practices that steer and ultimately shutter schools have yet to be examined in the school closure literature.

This paper offers evidence that suggests that the remote discursive practices— of educational administrators and governing institutions—that manage school shuttering policies are acts of discursive violence and circumstantial evidence of racial discrimination. Exploring the intersection of policy, law, hegemony, and discursiveness, this paper offers Smith et al. v. Henderson et al. as a case to contest if the shuttering of public schools is an altruistic education reform policy or indicia of racial discrimination.

We employ Discursive Violence Analysis (DVA), a qualitative methodology that operationalizes policies that create, relay, and reify systemic oppression, particularly in education. We use DVA to interrogate how discrimination is institutionalized and codified within education and other networking social systems. When operationalized, the constructs of discursive violence are legitimization and normalization. Discursive violence is legitimized through a praxis of political and regulatory networks formed in the founding and throughout the history of The United States—a historically oppressive narrative.

Data used for this paper is taken from a qualitative dataset from a more extensive study (Author, 2018). The units of analysis exist in the form of subpoenaed emails of school administrators and transcribed depositions of school administrators. Using DVA, we conduct a discursive analysis on the units of analysis, and we explore the intersection of policy, law, hegemony, and discursiveness in Smith et al. v. Henderson et al. as a case to contest if the shuttering of public schools is an altruistic education reform policy or indicia of racial discrimination. Findings suggest that school shuttering is a policy that makes discrimination difficult to prove; however, it is evident that it has a disparate impact on African American students and their communities.

Authors

• Rhodesia McMillian, The Ohio State University

• Mark Anthony Gooden, Teachers College, Columbia University