Poster #42 - “My hands are tied”: How the design of districts “route” students into alternative high schools

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Background: Alternative schools evoke long standing tensions and inequities in the education system. It is true that mainstream school settings have not and continue to not meet the needs of all students. However, the existence of separate educational settings of uncertain quality designed for historically marginalized students may create an avenue to further push these students away from mainstream schools. By leveraging novel quantitative data on the causes of student transfer alongside qualitative data reflecting the perspective and practices of district personnel (transfer coordinators) who process each individual transfer request, we answer the following research questions: What precedes a transfer coordinator receiving a transfer request? How do transfer coordinators identify constraints and possibilities in their role?

Method: We employed a participatory exploratory sequential design. Both qualitative and quantitative data reflect the perspectives of the transfer coordinators, whose daily work collectively provides the most comprehensive available information about the circumstances leading up to alternative school transfer requests. Transfer coordinators were interviewed about their implementation of district policy, which forms the basis for the qualitative analysis. As part of their daily workflow, transfer coordinators collected information about each transfer request. This data forms the basis for the quantitative analysis. After the quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted separately, the findings were integrated to identify similar and contrasting patterns. 

Findings: Transfer coordinators articulated two narratives about the “escalation” to alternative school transfer. The first narrative, “you can’t come back here,” described educators using transfer to pushout problematized students. The second narrative, “this isn’t working,” reflected the limited capacity of mainstream schools to address students’ needs and educators’ hope that alternative high school transfer would be helpful to the student. Quantitatively, 40% of families reported the school had told them it was unable to meet the needs of their student. Strikingly, there was no difference for these students in whether the transfer coordinator indicated a need for support services not offered or a need for change in the school environment. Transfer coordinators understood alternative high school transfer as necessary for students who might otherwise leave school without a diploma and they were wary that alternative schools did not have higher levels of supportive programming to help meet the underlying needs they perceived as contributing to student transfer. Beyond concerns about the quality of alternative schools, transfer coordinators questioned the existence of the alternative schools, “they are band-aids over bullet holes.” 

Discussion: We use the term “routing out” to describe how districts produce or encourage particular educator choices. This design includes intentional, articulated routes that students are placed on when educators feel “we can’t help you here” or “this isn’t working.” This routing out process occurs in an organization that addresses problematized students by sending them away rather than building the internal resources to provide support without removing students from their community. We build on the concept of “pushout,” which implies an active action taken by individual agents in an organization, to develop a way of talking about these actions in their situated organizational content.  

Authors

• Samantha Guz, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Hinze-Pifer, University of Illinois
  Non-Presenting Co-Author