The New Hidden Curriculum in California's Postindustrial Political Economy

• In Event: Beyond Policy Change Performance: Examining the Real Impact and Limitations of California's School Discipline Reforms

Abstract

Often viewed as the pinnacle of progressivism, California leads the nation in the adoption of new policies that seek to limit punitive, exclusionary discipline practices. And still, these reforms exist within the political economy of a state that has historically underfunded schools through finance policies that prioritize localized wealth and resources over full state redistribution (Kelly, 2020). This paper offers a comparative case-study analysis of two districts, examining the efforts to challenge punitive school discipline within and constrained by larger inequalities such as urban and rural disinvestment, housing segregation and inequitable resourcing practices.

District A is a mid-sized school district that covers multiple urban and suburban cities. District B is a rural school district which borders a Native American reservation. In each district, we conducted multiple-day site visits at several schools within each district. Interviews and observations were coded in Dedoose to identify disciplinary practices, disciplinary beliefs, and perceived supports and constraints for implementing alternatives to punishment. Researchers developed thick narrative case studies of each school and then of the district.

Largely drawn on race and class lines, these two districts serve as microcosms for understanding the role of schools in California’s current post-industrial political economy and yielded striking similarities, despite their geographic differences.’ In district A, gentrification has led to yearly demographic changes, which in turn, left only one “Black” high school. This high school exists within the eco-and economic sphere of a major gas refinery, literally leaving its Black citizenry to suffocate. Despite the existence of a multimillion dollar corporation polluting the air, the more favored high school, touted for its diverse student population of which white and Asian students make up a large majority, enjoys a new campus with tenured, experienced teachers. This division is upheld by school boundary lines drawn by the district to ensure middle-class and wealthy students are within the attendance zone of the favored high school. District B experiences similar stratification with Native students and the continuation of post-colonial violence manifested through a prison on their lands.

We found a clear material and imagined division between “favored” and “unfavored” schools, which became instantiated into school discipline as freedom, choice, and self-direction in favored schools and chaotic containment in unfavored schools. The favored school, known as the school where the children of prison guards attend, knowingly “poached” highly-qualified teachers and administrators who learned the ropes of teaching at the less favored school. Similar to the suburban district, the schools that served the majority of Native students were under-resourced and staffed with novice teachers and administrators. In both districts, under the coded language of stability teachers and resources were moved toward those whiter and more middle-class communities. Despite the millions of dollars that the prison and refinery made at the expense of Black bodies and indigenous lands in both regions, the school districts in both communities served to further extract resources from Black and Indigenous communities to benefit those made middle class by these remaining industries of post-industrial California.

Authors

• Danielle Huddlestun

• Danfeng Soto-Vigil Koon, University of San Francisco