Subvert and Supplant: The Political Fallout of State Takeover Legislation, Policies, and Practices

• In Event: Oppression at the Intersection: State Takeover Legislation and the Hostile Takeover of an Afro-Latina/o District

Abstract

Prior to 2001 and the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, states typically have taken over schools and school districts for reasons related to financial exigency (Author, 2017; Wong & Shen, 2003). In the aftermath of No Child Left Behind, states have taken over schools primarily for reasons related to purported academic struggles in schools and school districts (Author, 2018; Author; 2019). Recently, scholars have critiqued state takeover policies and practices as being ineffective at their stated goals: improving the academic outcomes of students in schools and school districts subjected to state takeover (Author, 2017; Author, 2018; Author, 2019; Morel, 2018). Furthermore, scholars most recently have alleged that state takeover policies and practices disrupt, displace, and replace political structures and governance bodies in schools and school districts subjected to state takeover. Given that 85% of schools and school districts that have been taken over are Black and/or Brown (Morel, 2018; Oluwole & Green, 2009), scholars have asserted that state takeover legislation and policy disparately disrupts Black and/or Brown communities (Author, 2018; Morel, 2018). However, a literature review on the impact of state takeover policies and practices on governance structures revealed no scholarly paper on the political consequences of state takeover legislation, policies, and practices. In other papers that consider the voices of policymakers, the authors do not write about the perspectives of those who are politically involved in resisting state takeovers (Fried, 2020; Schueler, 2019; Welsh & Williams, 2018). This paper fills that void in the scholarly literature.
In this paper, the author uses a qualitative approach, a phenomenological design, to assess the short- and long-term impacts of state takeover legislation and practices on the political and governance structures of Lawrence, Massachusetts. The author finds, using the lens of LatCrit (Huber, 2009; Osorio, 2018), that Black and Brown community members (specifically, politicians and social justice advocates) perceived the state takeover of public schools in Lawrence, Massachusetts as a) hostile, in contravention to the state’s purported efforts to include the community in decisions about and regarding the school district and b) disruptive to the political pipeline, leading to a sharp decline in the communities’ grassroots political movements and candidates. Specifically, the findings of this study revealed that a) the state did not make an earnest effort to include the voice of Afro-Latin@ voices, b) the state’s takeover practices, as related to Lawrence, Massachusetts, has resulted in lower political participations at all levels, thus fewer candidates in local elections, and c) the state’s takeover legislation has resulted in the targeting of the Afro-Latin@, mostly Dominican, population for disempowerment and disenfranchisement. These finding contradicts the findings of other studies, which failed to include the voices of local politicians and political operatives. Moreover, this finding is novel in that it is the first empirical research to confirm that—in the context of Lawrence, Massachusetts—state takeover legislation, policies, and practices have short- and long-term political consequences for populations that have been marginalized, disenfranchised, dispossessed, contained, and dehumanized.

Author

• Steven Leonice Nelson, University of Nevada - Las Vegas