Abstract
This qualitative case study focuses on a school created to educate expelled students, specifically examining the relationships between educators’ beliefs and philosophies and daily school life. At this school, Kelly’s (Last chance high. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993) competing philosophies of traditionalism and developmentalism got enacted at the school and classroom levels in ways that precluded effective practice. These competing philosophies reflect broader national and international discourses that simultaneously promote neoliberal marketization and democratic emancipation. Conflicting sub-cultures at the school under study emerged as the most salient conduit at the school level for the enactment of these competing philosophies, and administrators’ practices at the school and district levels unintentionally reinforced these conflicting sub-cultures. Findings suggest that improving the educational experiences of persistently disciplined students requires the clarification of philosophical underpinnings and cohesion of policy mandates and implementation at federal, state, and local levels. Without such clarification, alternative schools may serve more to push students further out of school and into the school-to-prison pipeline than to reengage them.
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Notes
California Education Code §48663(e).
Statistics were compiled from the California Department of Education for the 2009–2010 school year using the following website: http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/sd/.
Federal law mandates expulsion for serious drug and weapons offenses. States and districts have expanded their zero tolerance policies to include a host of other offenses as well. If students commit a federal zero tolerance offense, they receive a “straight expulsion” term, which means that they may not be enrolled in a regular public school district for the duration of one school year. However, if students commit a state or district-identified offense, the enforcement of those students’ expulsion terms can be “suspended” so that they can continue to receive education services within local school districts, but apart from the general student population. The school at which data were collected for this study was a district-operated CDS.
All names used in the study are pseudonyms.
Eleven more students agreed to participate but did not return parent consent forms.
Mad dogging refers to a hostile gaze interpreted by the subject as a challenge to fight.
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Kennedy-Lewis, B.L. Second chance or no chance? A case study of one urban alternative middle school. J Educ Change 16, 145–169 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-014-9242-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-014-9242-0