Tracking Sinocentrism: Mathematics Education, San Francisco, and Racialized Electoral Politics

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Intersecting Education Policy and Politics (Table 12)

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze arguments in a voter information guide distributed to all registered voters ahead of a local ballot measure in a recent election in San Francisco, CA. We study arguments for Proposition G, which reinstates tracking in mathematics as the policy of the City and County of San Francisco. We use AsianCrit and critical discursive policy analysis to argue that citizens’ statements supporting Proposition G mobilized anti-Chinese (Sinophobic) and anti-Asian American racist tropes, like the model minority myth, to muddle discourses of educational justice. We find that that educational research must consider the ways educational policy discourse continues to rely on Sinocentrism, and the stereotypes that emerge from it, to reinstate inequitable educational policies like tracking.

Authors

• Kyle L. Chong, Michigan State University

• Sheila Orr, University of Tennessee