Interest Convergence Across Geography

• In Event: 16.042 - A Reenvisioned Interest Convergence: Toward a New Racial Equity Framework

Abstract

Objectives and Perspective

Geography shapes educational opportunity and access. School funding and assignment policies tie place to school: wealthy children attend wealthy schools that, drawing upon a greater tax base, can offer high teacher salaries, safe and modern facilities, and rich curricula, while poor children attend poor schools without these resources. This relationship became even more pronounced in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, when thousands of white families fled city centers for the surrounding suburbs. Urban property values plummeted, and soon city schools were left with few resources to educate the children that remained. There is also a racialized aspect to this relationship between educational opportunity and geography, as racist lending and zoning practices ensured that the children left were children of color. Thus, “urban school” quickly became code for “poor school,” “black school,” and, often, “failing school.”
But this relationship isn’t just an urban phenomenon. Rural poverty rates outpace urban (O’Hare, 2009), and millions of poor rural children attend poor rural schools. This relationship is also racialized, especially post-Brown, when white children moved to whiter—and, typically, wealthier—districts or enrolled in private “segregationist academies” (Nevin & Bills, 1976). This demographic shift, coupled with increasing Latino immigration in the west and midwest (Hamann, Wortham, & Murillo, 2002), means that many rural schools are educating greater numbers of poor students of color with fewer resources.
Race and class mediate a complicated relationship between geography and educational opportunity. Drawing upon boundary theory, critical race theory, and other critical perspectives (including Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lamont & Molnar, 2002; Thomas, Lowe, Fulkerson, & Smith, 2011), this presentation will explore the production, structure, and implications of this relationship. It argues that the typical polarization of rural and urban masks a shared structural educational inequality, and it calls for re-envisioning interest convergence (Guinier, 2004) across geography.

Methods and Data Sources

This conceptual paper draws upon historic and contemporary research on school segregation, education inequality, and school reform. Because this research is heavily urban in focus, I will use examples from my own ethnographic fieldwork in both the rural south and rural New England to illustrate the ways in which race and class impact rural schooling.

Conclusions and Scholarly Significance

Schools in big cities and rural hamlets alike suffer from policies that require them to produce results without the resources and supports to do so, and many evidence decrepit facilities, low graduation rates, weak academic achievement, and high teacher turnover. Clearly, where one lives shapes one’s educational opportunities.
Yet, while a growing body of work seeks to identify the multiple structures that shape educational inequality, geography is rarely considered as a relevant factor. This paper explores the overlapping concerns and interests of urban and rural schools, seeking to better understand the ways in which geography writes the educational opportunities of children. It argues that education discourse and policy, historically and currently, serve to marginalize both urban and rural schools. Like race and class, geography matters, and educational equity depends upon geographic justice.

Author

• Mara Casey Tieken, Bates College