Students as Policy Actors Enacting Change in Virginia Public Schools

• In Event: The Politics of Student Voice: How Students Interrogate Policy Discourses, Processes, and Practices

Abstract

Purpose
This paper centers the voices of students who successfully fought to create anti-racist policy changes in their school district. Specifically, we examine the contextual factors behind, and political processes involved with, changing the names of two local schools due to the racist political commitments of their namesakes. We also analyze the role students played in moving the policy change process forward, as well as how school leaders responded to students’ policy leadership.

Theory, Methods, and Data Sources
Like Yanow (2000), we conceptualize policy interpretively, as a human construct actively shaped by experiences. Thus, developing a holistic understanding of various interpretive communities helped us contextualize ways problems were defined, types of solutions offered, and interactions between students, faculty, central administration, and school board. Primary sources include public documents and audio recordings of 16 district-community events attended summer 2020 through spring 2022, including school board meetings, community building sessions, and student discussion groups. Following Saldaña (2015) we used open coding, revisiting transcripts line-by-line to note consistent themes. We then conducted focused coding with the following story lines emerging most strongly: 1) The significance of students’ identities and their lived experiences with racist policies and practices; 2) The lack of institutional support and the need for cultural competency; 3) The importance of building community, critically understanding history, and distinguishing between symbolic and actionable change.

Findings
High school students planned, led, and participated in forums and school board meetings. Moreover, they defined policy problems using their own language and drew upon their own identities and values to frame these issues. Students skillfully showed historical connections between the racist beliefs and actions of the prior superintendent (whom the school was named after) and the continued racism students faced regularly at school. Students demanded a name change, while also acknowledging this as the first and symbolic step toward material change. They acknowledged the structural and pervasive nature of the racial and social inequities inherent within the district, drawing attention to the racial disproportionalities in higher level/gifted academic programs, criticizing the lack of cultural competence among teachers and the lack of teacher diversity, and calling for curricular reforms to reflect the experiences of communities of color.

Scholarly Significance and Connections to AERA Conference Theme
This work contributes to the understanding that educational spaces are political, constantly shaped and reshaped by social forces. Additionally, the study highlights the role of students as agents of change within their own communities. As such, this intrinsic case study exemplifies how students are mature and capable educational leaders and policy actors. The case connects and magnifies this year’s AERA theme as it is both illuminating and consequential. Participants interrogated policies and practices in pursuit of truth about their treatment as students of color and worked to educate the community, their families, and perhaps most importantly, the school board about what was actually happening in their schools due to the racist underpinnings of prior policy leadership.

Authors

• Katherine Cumings Mansfield, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author

• Marina Lambrinou, Loyola University Maryland
  Presenting Author