“We felt they took the heart out of the community”: Examining a community-based response to urban school closure

Green, Terrance L.

doi:10.14507/epaa.25.2549

Cited by 40 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…School closures often position communities in a defensive role, requiring them to spell out the value of their individual school. It is telling that some of the studies of communities developing counternarratives to school closures mentioned above were focused on cases of resistance from individual school communities (Green, 2017;Johnson, 2012;Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011). By adopting a common set of counterframes, however, it became possible for communities across different wards to move beyond defending their own schools.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has also documented innovative alternatives to closures. Green (2017) documented the story of a school that was re-opened after drawing on support from strong local partnerships, suggesting such community-based innovations could pose a possible alternative to closures. Still, more dramatic examples diminish the apparent destiny of closure.…”

Section: Inevitabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the number of urban public school closures continues to swell in the United States, so does the immense pushback from parents, communities, and youth working to safeguard their local institutions (Ewing, 2018;Fine, 2012;Green, 2017; Journey for Justice Alliance, 2014; Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011;Lipman, 2013;Noguera & Pierce, 2016;Pappas, 2018). Attempting to quiet the growing discontent, education officials present arguments for closures that they hope will convince students, families, and educators of their actions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“It just doesn’t add up”: Disrupting official arguments for urban school closures with counterframes

Syeed

2019

EPAA

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Mass school closures have become commonplace in urban school districts. To explain their actions, school system leaders often rely on a dominant frame that presents closures as an inevitable, data-driven, and politically neutral phenomenon in an educational landscape defined by shrinking budgets, demographic changes, and increased school choice. In response, research has typically focused on how communities tell counternarratives that seek to interrupt official accounts of school closures. Using a critical frame analysis of qualitative data from the 2013 school closure process in Washington, DC, I discuss another grassroots approach to disrupting school closures: counterframes. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and social movement theory, I discuss counterframes as discursive arguments that allow communities to directly challenge official rhetoric and offer alternatives. Findings show that communities in DC crafted counterframes that pushed back on the notion that the closures were inevitable, questioned the data guiding the process, and attempted to expose hidden agendas and interests behind shuttering schools. The article concludes with the relevance of counterframes to broader educational mobilizations as well as their limitations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Inevitabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“It just doesn’t add up”: Disrupting official arguments for urban school closures with counterframes

Syeed

2019

EPAA

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“…These strategies include conducting original research (Christens & Dolans, 2011;Magrath, 2015;McLaughlin, Scott, Dechenese, Hopkins, & Newman, 2009;Oakes, Renee, Rogers, & Lipton, 2008;Winton & Evans, 2016); consulting others' research (McDonald, 2013;Winton & Evans, 2016); engaging traditional and social media (McDonald, 2013;Ramey, 2013); and lobbying decision-makers (Opfer, Young, & Fusarelli, 2008). Some researchers demonstrate how successful advocates draw on their social networks and social capital to secure policy changes (e.g., Green, 2017;Grossman, 2012), while others examine how groups frame issues strategically (e.g., Feuerstein, 2015;Itkonen, 2009).…”

Section: What Do We Know About Educational Advocacy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Education Research in the Canadian Context

Laitsch¹,

MacKinnon²,

Young³

et al. 2019

IJEPL

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This special issue of the International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership (IJEPL), Research in the Canadian Context, marks a significant milestone for the journal. Throughout our twelve-year history, we have sought to publish the best research in leadership, policy, and research use, allowing authors to decide the topics by dint of their research. While this model still serves as the foundation for IJEPL content, we decided to give researchers a chance to engage in deeper conversations by introducing special issues. In our first special issue, researchers discuss their work within the scope of education policy, leadership, and research use within the Canadian context. While many aspects of leadership, teaching, and learning can be seen as similar across contexts, there are also issues of particular concern within national, regional, provincial, or local spheres, particularly when looking at policy and system changes. The researchers featured in this issue provide an important look into education in Canada.PolicyIn the policy realm, Sue Winton and Lauren Jervis examine a 22-year campaign to change special education assessment policy in Ontario, examining how discourses dominant in the province enabled the government to leave the issue unresolved for decades. Issues of access and equity play out within a neoliberal context focused on individualism, meritocracy, and the reduced funding of public services. While Winton and Jervis highlight the tension between policy goals and ideological contexts, Jean-Vianney Auclair considers the place of policy dialogues within governmental frames, and the challenge of engaging in broadly applicable work within vertically structured governmental agencies. One often-touted way to move beyondResearch useWithin the scope of research use, Sarah L. Patten examines how socioeconomic status (SES) is defined and measured in Canada, the challenges in defining SES, and potential solutions specific to the Canadian context. In looking at knowledge mobilization, Joelle Rodway considers how formal coaches and informal social networks nserve to connect research, policy, and practice in Ontario’s Child and Youth Mental Health program.LeadershipTurning to leadership, contributing researchers explored the challenges involved in staff development, administrator preparation, and student outcomes. Keith Walker and Benjamin Kutsyuruba explore how educational administrators can support early career teachers to increase retention, and the somewhat haphazard policies and supports in place across Canada to bring administrators and new teachers together. Gregory Rodney MacKinnon, David Young, Sophie Paish, and Sue LeBel look at how one program in Nova Scotia conceptualizes professional growth, instructional leadership, and administrative effectiveness and the emerging needs of administrators to respond to issues of poverty, socioemotional health, and mental health, while also building community. This complex environment may mean expanding leadership preparation to include a broader consideration of well-being and community. Finally, Victoria Handford and Kenneth Leithwood look at the role school leaders play in improving student achievement in British Columbia, and the school district characteristics associated with improving student achievement.Taken together, the research in this special issue touches on many of the challenges in policy development, application, and leadership practice, and the myriad ways that research can be used to address these challenges. We hope you enjoy this first special issue of IJEPL!

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“…Unfortunately, evidence suggests that a majority of students affected by closures do not end up in schools that are better than their origin school due to the lack of higher performing local options (CREDO 2017). Moreover, studies in receiving schools have found that redistricted students felt stigmatized as “dumb” and “failures” in their new schools, potentially introducing a negative effect that extends beyond academic performance (Dill et al, 2016; Gordon et al, 2018; Green 2017; Kirshner et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematically Shortchanged, Yet Carrying On

2019

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School reform policies, such as the closure of “low-performing” schools and the competitive introduction of school choice and charters, were presented to communities of color as the fix to educational inequities and the lifeline needed for urban Black students to have a chance at a quality education and social mobility. The ways in which reforms have under-delivered on this promise, and in some cases exacerbated negative academic outcomes, particularly for Black boys, are documented. Yet, research on the experience of Black adolescent girls is sparse. We explore ways that policies aimed at delivering a school choice environment have affected daily life for Black adolescent girls. We examine this issue in the context of the Detroit metropolitan area with Black adolescent girls, reflecting on their high school education experiences that spanned a time-period of rapid transitions in the schooling environment (2014–2016) prompted by a series of school reforms in Michigan. Through in-depth interviews we found that girls sought to invest in their high school education as a path to college; yet the very reforms advanced as ways to clear this path hindered their ability to spend time on the human and social capital activities believed to be important to their academic success and social mobility. Our findings suggest advantages for those students with proximal access to high quality neighborhood schools cannot be replicated in a choice environment. There may also be health consequences of the coping strategies girls are compelled to employ to carry on under adverse educational circumstances.

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“We felt they took the heart out of the community”: Examining a community-based response to urban school closure

Cited by 40 publications

References 38 publications

“It just doesn’t add up”: Disrupting official arguments for urban school closures with counterframes

“It just doesn’t add up”: Disrupting official arguments for urban school closures with counterframes

Education Research in the Canadian Context

Systematically Shortchanged, Yet Carrying On

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