"There are no bad kids here": Exploring the nexus of inclusion/exclusion in a continuation school

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Equity, Engagement, and Global Perspectives in the Evolving Learning Landscape

Abstract

This study examines the neoliberal logic that constitutes contemporary continuation high school policies and practices. Continuation schools are alternative educational settings for students labeled “at risk” of not graduating due to being expelled from their comprehensive school, lacking enough credits to graduate on time, and/or having excessive truancies. Through an ethnographic study at a California continuation school involving observations, interviews, and institutional ethnographic analysis, I analyze the experiences, perspectives, and interactions of students and staff members, situating these insights within the broader neoliberal context that the continuation school and its school district operate within. Specifically, this project considers the articulation of the discourses of success, respectability, and personal responsibility in the school; methods by which these messages are communicated; the ways neoliberal logic shapes the relationship between the continuation school and the rest of the school district; and student and staff responses to these discourses and practices. Preliminary findings of my research thus far reveal that continuation school staff, though often engaging in and reproducing neoliberal messaging taken on by the school, at times subvert and eschew the neoliberal framing of the school’s goals and approaches. My study contributes to the understanding of the neoliberal logic structuring alternative school policy and practice and the effects of these approaches on students and staff members.

Author

• Brian Mercado, CUNY-Graduate Center