Schooling for Suburbia: How Cultivated Inclusion and Curricula at a Suburban School Reinforce Suburban Interests

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: School Choice or Segregated Space? Stratification, Exclusion, and Race (Table 13)

Abstract

Playa Linda High School (pseudonym) is an excellent public school serving racially diverse students in suburban California. On the surface, the school appears a beacon of racial equality. All students participate in advanced course work and test scores are high across racial groups. This paper explores the development of racial ideology in this successful, suburban, multiracial context. Findings suggest two educational processes that produce ideologies that will likely reinforce suburban inequality. The first, "cultivated inclusion," ensured that only high performing and well-resourced students of color attended the school. Second, curricula avoided localized conversations about race - namely, robust histories of racial exclusion in their small-town suburb. As a result, students believed scant racial injustice existed in their local context.

Author

• Suneal H. Kolluri, University of California - Riverside