"I Am Not Meeting All Kids' Needs": Resistance to Racial Reform in a Suburban School

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 35
  In Roundtable Session: Race, Rights, and the Educational Experience: Revisiting the Role of Resistance as Epistemic Wisdom

Abstract

This ethnography examines racial reform and retrenchment at a suburban high school by analyzing classroom observations and interviews with three teachers who worked in a grade-recovery program. Drawing on Critical Race Theory’s analytic constructs of expansive and restrictive equality, findings illuminated that the Knowledge Center, a grade recovery program, was created to address the school’s long-term neglect of Black students’ academic needs. However, some administrative staff and White parents resisted racial reform by espousing equality rhetoric that all students should have access to the program, including students who were excelling academically, all of whom were white. Additionally, other teachers used formal equality rhetoric to penalize some Black students for receiving help from the program.

Author

• Shameka Nija Powell, Tufts University