Culture of Poverty: Education Policy, Turnaround, and Criminality

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Examinations of Punitive Leadership, Policies, and Practices and Their Impact on Students of Color

Abstract

This is an inquiry into the turnaround policy that was implemented in a school district in a Northeast city renamed Hopeville. Hopeville consisted of over 85 percent Latinx and African American students. The turnaround policy emerged as a result of the largest federal educational initiative in the history of the US—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) and its funding source Title I.
ESEA 1965 and its subsequent reauthorizations are propelled by deficit categories and discourses, which folded Title I beneficiaries into constructs to be viewed as “potentially dangerous and disruptive” (Stein, 2004, p. 59). This paper explores some important ways in which framing students as “potentially dangerous” manifests in schooling in Hopeville.

Author

• James Wright, San Diego State University