Mismatch: How Policy Positionality Helps Explain Education Policy That Doesn't Fit Students

• In Event: Differences Between Developing and Enacting Equitable Policy: Understanding the Role of Positionality

Abstract

Our critical case study explored differences in how student and adult policy actors described student needs within the policy formation process, and the actions each group took accordingly. Drawing from interviews, social and public media, and public meeting transcripts, our team analyzed discourse and deliberation during an urban school district’s efforts to revise admissions policies for its selective public schools, which were characterized by long-term underrepresentation of minoritized student groups. We identify a mismatch in stakeholders’ positionality. Student actors had richer experience positionality with the policy in question but had more distant policy formation positionality, marginalized by official policy formation structures. The inverse was true for adult actors. We draw implications for policy analysis and student engagement in policy formation.

Authors

• Kate L. Phillippo, Loyola University Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Caitlin Donnelley-Power, Loyola University Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Matt Leo
  Presenting Author

• Marjorie Colindres
  Presenting Author

• Holly Jacobs, Robbins Schwartz Nicholas Lifton & Taylor Ltd.
  Presenting Author