The Criminalization of “Failures”: How Segregated Schools and Racial Disparity Prevail in an Integrated Neighborhood

• In Event: 3559 - Race and Racialized Inequality in Schooling

Abstract

Social scientists have established robust links between residential segregation and segregated public schools. However, separate and unequal public schools also exist within neighborhoods. How do systems of racially and academically segregated schools endure within neighborhoods rather than between them? Drawing on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork and 120 in-depth interviews at two disparate high schools in an affluent suburban neighborhood, I find that high school students who struggle academically are pressured and compelled to transfer to a separate and unequal high school – a process of “academic segregation.” Though students are transferred for academic struggles, not deviant behavior, the separate high school is characterized by austere, prison-like features and punitive policies common of schools located in neighborhoods plagued by violence and illicit activity. This punitive segregation criminalizes the neediest students and stigmatizes them as “failures” in the community. Moreover, it greatly restricts their curriculum and opportunities for post-secondary education.

Author

• Sean Drake, New York University