Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores dramatic new forms of police power operating in a Southern public school system by documenting the expanded uses of technology by police in a public school. Specifically, the tracking and utilization of student conduct data for police work by crime analysts in an urban law enforcement agency, reveal a disproportionate targeting of minority students and a de facto “defining deviancy downward” facilitated by police power and the outsourcing of school discipline by the school system to the police department. The civil rights and criminological consequences of these developments are explored.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper I analyze if charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate existing patterns of segregation in public schools by comparing the racial composition of charter schools with the racial composition of the public schools located in the school districts that have sponsored charter schools in California, one of the most active chartering states. The analysis spans the first fourteen years of charter school reform in California (1993-2006). In the first part of the analysis I use exposure and isolation indexes to provide measures of the exposure of the average white student to black and Latino students and white isolation. The standardized forms of the exposure and isolation indexes (S and eta2, respectively) are used to facilitate comparisons across years and sectors. In the second part of the analysis, I examine the distribution of students in highly segregated schools. The results of the analysis are mixed and suggest that overall, charter schools are not ameliorating racial segregation in public education and may well be exacerbating existing patterns of school segregation.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Educational researchers have produced a great deal of powerful data concerning what challenges students of color face in the public school. What prevents this research from fully explaining the issue of race and public schools is their underlying assumption that public schools are race neutral, or color-blind spaces. Feminist sociologists (Acker, 1990; Pierce, 1995) have successfully made the argument that organizational spaces are gendered, and use as their case work organizations. We argue that organizational spaces are racialized; that is, common-sense notions of race mediate the relationship between the school and the actors that comprise it. The particular case we use to show how space is racialized is the public school organization. Specifically we observe how Whiteness is built into school space. The qualitative data informing this article indicates that Latino students consistently refer to pre- and post-secondary educational institutions as “White,” or “White space.” The observation of formal policies and informal practices of the various school sites indicates that school organizations that often appear neutral are actually constructed by the racialization of what is the “other” and what is “White.” That is, the space that school organizations define as race neutral or “color-blind” is actually a “White” space.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: One of the promised benefits of school choice is that choice schools will not only provide high quality educational services, but that traditional public schools will also improve, compelled to do so in order to prosper in a competitive environment. The issue that this research addresses is whether or not traditional public schools show improvement in the face of competition from choice schools. It does so using data from Texas, which has among the highest levels of penetration by charter schools. Based on the theory that competitive pressure is mediated by distance, a set of traditional public schools was selected based on their proximity to comparable open enrollment charter schools. These traditional public schools were compared to a group of their “peer group” schools, as designated by the Texas Education Agency, on four outcomes – state achievement test performance, graduation rates, dropout rates, and attendance rates. The peer group schools did not face competition from charter schools. The comparisons take the form of difference-in-means tests supplemented by multivariate analyses. These comparisons indicate that, for the most part, competition schools show no greater improvement on these outcomes than schools that did not experience competition. Where differences do appear, they are quite small.