Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools

1 “Equity Has to Be a Priority”: Converging Interests and Displacing Responsibility

C H A P T E R O N E “Equity Has to Be a Priority” Converging Interests and Displacing Responsibility I have stressed the importance of looking beyond the superficial rhetoric of policies and practices, in order to focus on the material and ideological work that is done to legitimate and extend race inequity. When judging education policy, therefore, it is pertinent to ask some deceptively simple questions. . . . These are by no means the only relevant “tests” of equity and policy, but they are among the most revealing and fundamental because they go beyond the expressed intent of policy-makers and practitioners to examine how policy works in the real world. First, the question of priorities: Who or what is driving education policy? Second, the question of beneficiaries: Who wins and who loses as a result of education policy priorities? And, finally, the question of outcomes: What are the effects of policy? —DAVID GILLBORN, “EDUCATION POLICY AS AN ACT OF WHITE SUPREMACY” I entered the Zion School District with the intention of studying “multicultural education” on the ground—in schools and among teachers in different school contexts. In 2005, this was the language used in schools and colleges of education to reference work around diversity and sometimes equity. Consistent with this national trend, I knew the Zion School District had a policy on the books titled “Policy on Multicultural Education” as well as a district administrator charged with implementing the policy. As the chapters in this book highlight, I learned something about how the district and particular teachers engaged this thing called multicultural education, but I also learned much about how educators engaged whiteness in their various approaches to diversity. 26 “ EQ U I T Y H A S TO B E A PR I O R I T Y ” Before going inside schools and hearing about how teachers engage diversity-related policy and practice, it is useful to consider how the Zion School District’s central office understood, engaged, and shaped efforts around diversity. One obvious starting point for this analysis is to look directly at the multicultural education policy. Indeed, the policy itself and work surrounding the policy composed a significant portion of the central office’s leadership around diversity. But widening the lens to examine other diversity-related work is also important for understanding how issues of equity and whiteness get taken up, used, and discarded in particular contexts. This chapter focuses on the narratives of central office leaders and the work done at the central office in order to provide a more complete rendering of the context surrounding what happens at Birch Secondary School and Spruce Secondary School. Starting with the central office’s policy and practice begins to answer David Gillborn’s call for better understanding the “material and ideological work that is done to legitimate and extend race inequity” in schools (2005, 492). I return, first, to the district policy initially introduced in the previous chapter. The policy’s origin and implementation are indicative of larger trends in the central office’s work around diversity. By examining the policy, we begin to see how interest convergence and the displacement of responsibility for equity play out on the ground. Then I shift focus to other diversity-related work engaged by central office leaders and the ways they described the work being done in the district. Here I suggest that the central office leverages its responsibility for equity when it is so compelled because of external pressure from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). In these cases, we see a convergence of interests among federal mandates, district priorities, and communities of color. When there are no such interests converging, however, the central office displaces responsibility for equity back to the schools. When equity is solely a policy imperative driven by mandates or funding, diversity-related efforts end up being limited and temporary. In these instances, whiteness and the interests of those with power are always maintained, because—whether shaped by federal mandates, sitebased decisions, or accountability pressures—diversity-related policy and practice in the Zion School District are consistent with niceness and thus rarely disrupt the status quo or challenge inequity. Policy on the Books, Policy in Practice As I mentioned in the introductory chapter, the Zion School District developed a diversity and multiculturalism policy in 1997. The [18.218.168.16] Project MUSE...