Abstract
This article presents the results of a participatory action research project about the impact of the closings on the parents, teachers, and students experiencing school closure. Using participatory action research methods, the researcher, the author of this article, and a community-based organization worked together in “contingent collaboration” to surface a counter-narrative about school closings which was used to critique and ultimately advocate against the policy of school closings. While the research was used for advocacy, it is also analyzed by this researcher to demonstrate the possibilities of the participatory action research to counter to neoliberal discourses prevalent in research on urban schools and communities, which paint those communities as damaged and in need of fixing. It uses the work of critical race theorists as a lens to view the school closings, pointing out that educational inequalities always have a racial component. At the same time, the article also reveals the pitfalls of this kind of research, showing that the collaboration between a white university researcher and a community-based, youth of color-led organization cannot be truly free of racism and white hegemony, even when trying to expose it in a policy reform.
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Notes
Rather than use the term “people of color,” I use Black and Brown to emphasize that school closing policies have targeted primarily the descendants of the African Diaspora in the United States in cities where they are large in numbers, but do not hold political power.
These organizations were youth-led community based organizations in Baltimore. More information can be found at newlines.info and http://www.baltimorealgebraproject.org.
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Shiller, J. The Disposability of Baltimore’s Black Communities: A Participatory Action Research Project on the Impact of School Closings. Urban Rev 50, 23–44 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0428-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0428-7