Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on, among other things, the basis of sex in public schools and colleges.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial
assistance.
Zero Tolerance
The policy of applying laws or penalties in a strict, often exclusionary, manner to infringements of a code in order to reinforce its overall importance.
LIMITATIONS
Participants include graduates of a principal preparation program focused on anti- racist leadership who are serving in school leader positions within the past one to four years. Therefore, the discretionary decisions to make connections to other school leaders and/or similar contexts is entirely up to consumers of this research study.
High school principals and assistant principals deal with increasing discipline issues. The lack of high school participants in this study limits the conversation surrounding the contextual environment at the secondary level as compared to the experiences of the participants in this study who represent four elementary and one middle school. However, the landscape of the discipline gap spans elementary, middle and high school, so the perspectives of the elementary and middle school leaders captures authentic voices from the field.
While the participants were purposefully selected for being new to school
leadership, there is an inherent dearth of quantitative data to support their record of equity as it pertains to the discipline gap. Records are only maintained at the district level
through the state education website, so the quantitative type of data included in this study that represents the “numbers story” behind race and discipline at the participants’ schools is limited to what each a. collects in their schools, and/or b. was willing to share with me.
DELIMITATIONS
The scope of this focuses only on one sample of the school leadership population - recent graduates of a principal preparation program focused on anti-racist leadership who have been identified, and who self-identity, as being aspiring anti-racist leaders. This study will not include perspectives of other disciplinarians in the school, such as teachers. In this study, the policy problem is limited to the racial discipline gap, therefore other inequities in school discipline, such as the overrepresentation of students with disabilities is not a topic under consideration, despite being of critical importance to the work of social justice leaders.
An important conversation in the school-to-prison pipeline is the training and use of school resource officers in schools. Only one participant in this study works in a school environment that includes a full-time school resource officer. Therefore, this school factor in the racial discipline gap is absent from the conversation in this study.
ASSUMPTIONS
This study seeks to examine how aspiring anti-racist leaders make sense of the racial discipline gap and draw on their preparation programs to frame and respond to racially discriminatory practices. Several assumptions are inherent in the purpose of the study. First, there is the assumption that aspiring anti-racist leaders have the knowledge and skills to become a leader for equity in discipline practices and policies. Second, it is assumed that the elimination of the racial discipline gap is a goal of the participants of the study and that they have had previous opportunities to make sense of the racial discipline gap at their school and district.
Finally, all participants identify with being anti-racist and have been identified by others as aspiring anti-racist leaders, therefore there is a general assumption that these individuals think, and act, beyond traditional or status quo responses to the racial discipline gap. As stated earlier, a general assumption made in this study is that racial awareness is not possible through the adoption of colorblind perspectives and the very nature of the label “aspiring anti-racist leader” necessarily implies that these participants do not identify with colorblind ways of thinking.
SIGNIFICANCE
This study will expand conceptions of how principals conceive their role in anti- racist leadership as it relates to classroom management situations where students of color are disproportionately referred for disciplinary actions. Similar to Fenning and Rose (2007), rather than continuing to repeat the status quo and continue to look for ways to fix the students, this study will consider how school leaders who have been identified, and self-identify as, aspiring anti-racist leaders make sense of their identities toward anti- racist leadership. The findings from the study will contribute to the consideration of how principal preparation programs can better design (Capper, et al., 2006; Lightfoot, 2009; Mckenzie et. al, 2008) and prepare (Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015) leaders for the work of racial equity.
How aspiring anti-racist leaders make sense of the discipline gap as they navigate the intersection between the problem as a real, living challenge in their work lives
juxtaposed against their identity as aspiring anti-racist leaders is an important and practical contribution to social justice and sensemaking scholarship. In addition, the
ways that these aspiring anti-racist leaders frame the problem (Sleegers et al., 2009; Young et al. 2011) through their sensemaking approaches ultimately limits or expands their ways of thinking about solutions to the racial discipline gap and offers a better understanding of these inter-related processes of sensemaking and problem framing toward enactment.
CONCLUSION
The discipline gap operates alongside the academic divide, or achievement gap, between students of color and their White peers. The overrepresentation of Black students in school suspension coincides with opportunity gaps that limit academic prospects for students of color (Ford, 2010; Ford, Harris, Tyson, & Troutman, 2002; Naglieri & Ford, 2003; Tyson, Darity, & Castellino, 2005). This evidence, in conjunction with the substantial influence that principals have upon schools, inspires a focus on the sensemaking and problem-framing that aspiring anti-racist leaders do around the discipline gap.
At a time when schools work to eliminate the race-based achievement gap, the anti-racist leadership of principals is of paramount importance. The consideration of the effectiveness of student removal from the learning environment juxtaposed against the consideration of who is being removed is a real problem for school leaders. The social justice responsibilities of aspiring anti-racist leaders intersect in meaningful ways with their roles as instructional leaders.
Traditional responses, largely anchored in deficit perspectives (Bonilla-Silva, 2003) are symbolic of a status quo response, and have done little to combat the discipline
and achievement gap. Aspiring anti-racist leaders have the purview to enact changes to the disciplinary environments of schools, especially as it relates to approaches to discipline. As such, students who have been identified as aspiring anti-racist leaders offer important insights into the sensemaking around the inherent conflict of student removal from class to limit disruptions and the social justice goal of equity and anti- racism.