‘They go above and beyond’: challenging racism and whiteness: critical race counterstories about an ‘underperforming’ high school

ABSTRACT

What does it mean for a school to be failing? Too often, answers to this question do not include insights from students of colour, their families, or teachers. In fact, schools, especially those that serve poor communities of colour, lack systemic opportunities for educators to hear directly from students. This qualitative case study yielded powerful critical race theory (CRT) counterstories from school community members about their experiences at a school categorised as needing improvement and ‘underperforming’ by the state. Counterstories offer a different view of the school. Students and family members described a place where educators went ‘above and beyond’ to support social and academic success of youth ‘pushed out’ of other schools. CRT counternarratives are also used to expose white racially framed metrics of school effectiveness and provide insight into alternative perspectives on school and student success.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• counternarratives
• underperforming
• school accountability
• white racial frame

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the participants of the study and the staff of the charter school who made it possible for us to successfully meet the charge we were given.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The school intentionally used the label non-attender (versus dropout) to refer to students who had stopped coming to school regularly. For readability, when talking about aggregates, we have chosen to refer to alumni, current students, and non-attenders as ‘students’ – since emergent study themes were consistent across these groups. When quoting specific participants, we note the distinctions in the current role.

Additional information

Funding

This charter school received a state improvement grant. A portion of that grant was used to conduct this qualitative case study.