“Don’t Let Me Lose My Students”: Education Policy, Racialized Stigma, and Disciplinary Decisions in the Rural South

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Inquiries Into Issues of Racial Disproportionality in K-12 Education (Table 10)

Abstract

Schools function at the nexus of local, state, and federal policies that govern how money is spent, what data are collected, who can enroll, and how students and staff are expected to perform. Using the case of Abundance Junior High School, a predominantly Black school of 150 students in rural Louisiana, I describe how three legal/policy interventions — school desegregation orders, state school performance scores, and a school choice policy —coalesced to create instability in school enrollment. I illustrate how the pressure caused by these enrollment shifts intersects with the local social, historical, and political context, with AJHS left to navigate the impacts of these policies alongside the school’s racialized stigma — and how this affects decisions in the realm of school discipline.

Author

• Meaghan Mingo, University of Notre Dame