ABSTRACT

Despite their apparently universal application, Chicago’s 1995 school reform policies-accountability, centralized regulation, standards, educational “choices”—are deployed selectively as a racialized, class-specific ensemble of messages and social practices. In this and the next two chapters, I examine what these policies mean in four different local school contexts. This chapter explores these messages and social practices at Grover and Westview, two low-income African American elementary schools serving public housing projects. I argue that the thrust of centralized control and accountability in these schools is to regulate students and teachers and to redefine education around the skills, information, procedures, and results of standardized tests. This kind of schooling prepares people for low-skilled jobs. But it is also a racialized discourse that disciplines African American students and their teachers and constructs African Americans in general as people in need of social control. I will argue that these policies contribute to the formation of white supremacist culture and consciousness and the construction of an urban mythology of middle-class normalcy and whiteness that justifies the removal of African American urban communities no longer needed as a source of

industrial labor. Yet, schools are “paradoxical institutions” (Ball, 1997a), and despite the hegemony of accountability discourses, no unitary story can be told about Westview and Grover. There is resistance, and dominant discourses are complicated by alternative ideologies and mediated by specific contexts. Yet, despite these contradictions, in the end, I have to conclude that educational disparities are hardened, and in the most beleaguered and regulated context, we see demoralization and flight. The starting point of my discussion is the schools and their communities.