S10E4 – Managing an Increasingly Diverse and Unequal Education System with Dr. Erica Turner

S10E4 - Managing an Increasingly Diverse and Inequitable Education System

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Managing an Increasingly Diverse and Unequal Education System with Dr. Erica Turner. And we have a really great conversation today about the way that our school districts across the country are changing and have changed. And I think it sheds some light on some of the drama that we see today around public schools.

Dr. Val: Yeah. So I'm thinking specifically about that word managing and okay, I will confess… I kind of think of Michael Scott. My favorite manager in the history of managers. [Andrew laughs]

Andrew: Yep. That's what she said.

Dr. Val: And right. [Val Laughs] And so, when I think about creating the integrated and just schools that we're looking for, I think management is one of those things that would be low on my list… skills we need or things that we need to talk about.

Andrew: Yeah, for sure. There's lots of skills that we have talked about in the past that I think are needed from, you know the CARE framework…

Dr. Val: Mm hmm.

Andrew: …what we need from teachers. We talk a lot about what we need from parents. We talk a lot about kind of national level policy and research but this sort of manager position, the school board leader, the district administrator, the superintendent, the people in that role is where our conversation today focuses. And it's something that I had not thought much about until coming across Dr. Turner's work.

Dr. Val: We haven't talked a lot about that middle layer. And so I hope that some district level folks or some school principals call in and tell us some of the things that they're working on. And I can't separate a person's management style from their beliefs and values about this work generally, right? And so it would seem to me that, if integration, racial justice were important to me as a human, that would show up in the way that I led my school or led my district.

Andrew: Yeah. And I guess that most people in those positions share those sorts of feelings about a deep concern for the well being of students, a desire to work towards racial equity and then find themselves in this sort of like, managerial position. And I think what Dr. Turner's research really shows is that the things that are available to them, the ways that they are even able to operate in that space are somewhat limited and often end up pushing them to ignore race. I think some of the ways that those options get limited comes back to this neoliberal idea about school competition and that if we can sort of inject more business practices into schools, that that is inevitably going to lead to better schools. And I think we, we spent a long time as a country kind of trying that out. And, Dr. Turner's research certainly shows that it didn't have the outcomes that we might've hoped.

Dr. Val: Often in these leadership positions a popular book is From Good to Great. Right. How do you take your school system from good to great? And that is definitely a business model. And we're dealing with young people and we're dealing with humans and we're dealing with nuance and complexity.

Andrew: Yeah. Are there some benefits to be gained from taking a more sort of systemic approach to thinking about school improvement and whatnot? I would imagine that there are some benefits to that, but I think what Dr. Turner's work points out is that, you know, this move towards more and more business practices within the education space actually ends up creating the space for even more inequity.

Dr. Val: Yeah, let’s dig in.

Andrew: Alright, let's take a listen to our conversation with Dr. Erica Turner.

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Dr. Erica Turner: Hi, I am Erica Turner. I'm an associate professor of Educational Policy Studies in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm a parent of three kids, a 13 year old, a 10 year old, and a 3 year old who are all public school students. Which influences my work quite a bit. I'm also a native of San Francisco, California, and I think about that and my own experiences as a student there as I’m very much also shaping kind of the questions I ask and the the interests that I have and the research that I do.

Andrew: That's great. How did you find yourself caring about education policy, and particularly race and equity questions about education policy?

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. My background growing up is that I am Chinese American and Black. It was always a conversation at the dinner table, about questions of inequity, whether it was schools or fire departments or the way the city was designed. My parents were in the nonprofit area. So my mother worked in a it's called Chinese for Affirmative Action. It's an Asian American civil rights organization in San Francisco. And then my father is a city planner by trade, but he is always headed a nonprofit that does architectural services for low income communities and, and individuals. But my experience was growing up is that, you know, my parents chose a middle school that was a school that was created out of a consent decree agreement about how San Francisco should desegregate its schools. And that school was predominantly actually Latine or Latinx, in the Mission District of San Francisco. And it was a wonderful, it was a wonderful experience. The school was designed to be culturally responsive and socially aware which is a great thing for middle schoolers. Amazing thing for that age and developmental stage. You know, one of the things I love about them as a teens and pre-teens as a former middle school teacher is just that, you know, curiosity, sense of justice and concern… Like actually becoming kind of outside of your own little world to look at the world around you and, and think about what's fair. And so I think that was just a wonderful kind of place to be in at that age.

Andrew: So your parents, you know, chose this middle school experience for you, which seems like it had an impact. And then I'm guessing like, you know, being in a place like San Francisco must have also had an impact on how you see the world and these questions of racial equity.

Dr. Erica Turner: I was really interested in why a place like San Francisco… it just always puzzled me. Like, why is a place that says it's so progressive and believes in these questions of racial equity, or purportedly does. And then, you know, has schools that are segregated or, or schools that are tracked. So that has been kind of a question that has laced through my work and related to that, how people make sense of what racial inequality or racial justice is and how that shapes kind of their decisions and actions.

Dr. Val: I was cheering because as a former middle school teacher, literally we're the best people on earth . First of all…

Andrew: Three cheers for middle school teachers…

Dr. Val: Oh, absolutely. Second, I really wanted to shout out to your parents.

Dr. Erica Turner: Hmm.

Dr. Val: I think that's really important for our audience as well to know that the conversations that they have or the ones that they are avoiding do have an impact, right? And so how do we gain the courage to continue to have these conversations with our young people? So shout out to your parents as well.

Andrew: Yeah. So we've, we've talked a lot on the podcast about parents and caregivers. We've talked a lot about teachers and students. We've talked about kind of big societal level factors that impact education. And we haven't talked as much about the sort of folks in the middle, the like district level school board members, superintendents, administrative policy makers at the local level.

And, and you wrote a book called Suddenly Diverse, How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality, that really focuses on those people, the, those like levers of power and the decision makers at that level. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about, you know, why Suddenly Diverse, what did you set out to learn? You did an ethnographic study of two towns in Wisconsin. What was the goal in doing that and why focus on those, that kind of level of decision maker?

Dr. Erica Turner: So the book is about how two medium-sized Wisconsin school districts, in their everyday policymaking and decisions, try to address their changing circumstances. A large piece of that is school populations that are increasingly diverse, racially diverse, but also increasingly unequal. And that's just kind of what our society is right now. It's more unequal than it's ever been. It's also more racially diverse than it's ever been.

And so I, I look at in these two districts how they understand these changes that they're going through. Not only are their student populations changing, but the accountability pressures are stronger, the resources are fewer in many ways. And what I find across the two is that they go towards kind of more corporate and entrepreneurial approaches and models that are familiar, right? Accountability is a kind of accounting, corporate accounting model of how to address problems.

And the other thing that they do is they try to market their diversity. And so this idea of like kind of serving the customer, right? Is obviously a logic of a kind of a choice or market model of schooling. When money follows kids, as it does in all of these kind of market-based systems, it does create and exacerbate competition for students.

Andrew: So we have these like corporate approaches to dealing with changing student populations and increasing inequity. And it's really the district level leaders who are turning to these more corporate approaches. Right. And I guess, you know, from reading your book, it seems like actually part of the reason we probably haven't talked so much about these mid-level power players is somewhat intentional that those people are viewed as kind of like bureaucrats doing a job, but that there's not as much sort of influence at that level. And, and I think you really kind of destroy that a little bit, talking about kind of the power that exists in that place.

Dr. Erica Turner: I mean I had become interested in graduate school I worked on a different project about folks in that area. People talked a lot about organizational change and the organizational factors that were shaping decisions within school district offices. And, and there was a separate conversation about the politics of education and urban education. People who looked at what was happening inside the school districts were not typically looking at kind of systemic inequality. They were concerned about systemic inequality, but they were thinking about kind of norms and rules and resources, uh, somewhat separate from thinking about race.

In the other kind of approach, people thinking about urban politics, it was always like big business and highly privileged parents. And they thought about race and, and also economics and how those mattered but not really what was happening within the… in the institutions themselves.

Andrew: So it sounds like conversations about race, racial inequality, to the extent they happen at all, are sort of like relegated to the folks who are thinking about urban politics. City council, the mayor, these kind of folks that are concerned about schools, but, but also economics and business interests and that sort of thing.

And then you have these like mid level school folks who, who are also a part of the government, right? But they're, they're almost like ignoring race, right? And focusing on school resources, on norms, on rules, teacher pay, those kinds of things. And we're certainly in a time of a lot of sort of community level pushback to the way that education is happening. There's a lot of kind of negative sentiment about public schools in general. Do you think that that's related to this at all?

Dr. Erica Turner: So I think one thing that we know is that people generally actually like public schools and like their own public school, right? There's like decades of polling research which shows that. But when you ask them to grade public schools more generally, they're not as positive. So there's kind of a discourse out there that's a bit more negative in people's own experience. So there's kind of a sense that like what you know best, you actually like. But there's obviously kind of an anti-public school discourse out there as well.

Schools and teachers, and I think there's a kind of gendered element to this because teachers are predominantly women and there's a sense of putting on schools, like all the responsibilities for society. And we also kind of believe that because we believe like education's the way to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And so education's how we solve many, many problems in the US poverty, obesity epidemic will be saved by, you know, classes in schools so, schools get a lot put on them.

During the pandemic and during kind of the racial reckoning, schools became a focal point for that. And maybe they always are and that became the moment, right, to see it. And so those kind of bigger questions which have become just salient in society, have kind of become localized within debates about education. And in schools, you know, as much as I, I do critique them, have been some of the first of our social institutions to really expand thinking and approaches to this. They’re you know, again, not perfect, but in some ways leading in, in the ways that they include and provide access and opportunity to people.

From within the education field, we do a lot more critiquing, and rightly so, right, like there, there's plenty of room for improvement. But as people are kind of asking who are we as a nation, as a multiracial democracy that, that, I think has been a place where that's played out… those broader questions and who's really in charge here? Who should be? You know, is getting played out in school systems. In education especially. It's the closest piece of government to most people's lives, right? You, you could know a school board member you can walk into your kid's school or walk up to it. You can know those people in a way that it's not as likely often that you'll know the mayor or a state policy maker, a federal policy maker. And they have a lot of influence because of how education is organized and governed.

Dr. Val: I’m stuck on the idea and it, it was an ‘aha’ for me. About school and school systems being like the closest form of government to any individual and it feels like, just certainly in this context right now that we're living in, it's the one in which people have really strong opinions about, feel like they should definitely get involved even if they don't have students in the systems. Right. So can you, can you talk a little bit about, about that idea and what you're seeing right now? The way communities, parents, caregivers, are getting involved in this form of government that is so close and so impactful.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Some schools really kind of responded in a way that I would want them to and kind of saying, “oh, maybe we need to recognize students' own gender identities.” And certainly the racial reckoning made more educators more committed to bringing in new literature to raising up issues that they hadn't or hadn't done as much. Those aren't settled questions though, within society. So people have pushed back on that. I think we can look at it as kind of regressive, but I actually look at it as that pushback as the result of having made some small progress in those areas. And there's another thing which is just that, there's been a kind of concerted effort to roll back the state to, to have public institutions privatized. And, and schools and libraries. Those have been some of the places though that still exist as kind of part of our public square. And so they, they're contested, I think, in that way, kind of like, why do we need public schools? This kind of thing can generate folks wanting to send their children to, or support, you know, private or voucher or tax credits. Different ways in which the kind of public decisions and public decision makers are, are, are subverted. And some of those more equity oriented tendencies you know are undermined basically.

Andrew: There's like this somewhat hopeful version in the story you're telling, which is that like it's to be expected that we are having conflict around schools because they are the institution of government that is the most close to us, it's like a, a little microcosm of the country. And so as the country continues to grapple with these bigger questions, the fact that we are grappling with them, the fact that we are having a racial reckoning in our public schools is going to generate this sort of pushback. The vision that we are using schools as a place to start to work out these differences that we have on kind of society wide level. It's hopeful in that we are now trying to grapple with it. We can worry about whether, you know, the more hopeful side is winning or not, but there is something hopeful in that story, I think.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, I mean, it's an important point to me about the book when you think about that Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges. So Ruby Bridges is, you know, I think she's six years old. She's in this white pinafore dress and she is single-handedly desegregating a school in New Orleans, or the school system. She's surrounded by national Guardsmen who are armed. We can think of that, and I think we often do think of that just by the fact that it's a Norman Rockwell painting as a moment of national lore and I think people look at it fondly, right? Like, the bravery of this young girl makes us feel good about who we are as a country.

Andrew: Mmmmm.

Dr. Erica Turner: But you can look at that picture exactly the opposite way. Right. Outside the frame of that photo, there are parents standing on the sidelines screaming at her, right? Those guards are armed for a reason, and that's a traumatizing experience for her. And when she went in the school, it wasn't any better. So that's a way of saying that's what the schools are in a system. They were built, they were designed to be segregated, and it's only been a struggle that we are where we are now.

So you can look at it as like, there's hope, right? Like there's change. But I think what I'm trying to bring out is it is a site of conflict. And when local school district people hold onto this idea of education as it can be the great equalizer. It can be a space where people come to better understand each other, society, right? It can really be an engine. Part of the story of integration is that educational integration can provide greater opportunities, right? But I think the flip side is it's also an institution that greatly reproduces the inequalities that exist in our society. It's a product of the society, it's not immune from those things. So here you have Ruby Bridges, right? And here's a place where education was desegregated sooner than many other public institutions. But it wasn't without a fight and inside the school the experience was still really problematic, right? Nothing changed about the curriculum. Black teachers were fired en masse. And this is just what happens all the time, right?

Andrew: And I guess it's in the context of this sort of, you know, site of conflict that these kind of school district decision makers are making their decisions. Right. And, and the book sort of gets into, to the challenges that they run up against. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Erica Turner: So I think a lot of times what happens is school district decision makers, they, they see like okay, here's an issue. Just at a very basic level, we need more bilingual books to make reading accessible to our multilingual student population. Let's go buy some of these books. Let's also find books that appeal to and represent the backgrounds of our increasingly diverse student population. And then, you know, there's limited budgets and some people don't like the messages in those. And so then there's this backlash, right?

The school's basically trying to do something that's good, that kind of speaks that part of schools that we imagine that they sometimes achieve of being spaces of, multiracial democracy, right? Where everybody has an equal recognition and place and resources, right, as an equal citizen. But they quickly run up against the fact that in many ways schools still operate according to the existing systems of power. So, who still is in charge, who has influence in schools is still in place.

So often they may capitulate or they may kind of roll back the commitment. It doesn't even have to be a lot of people. But once people, whose minds start.... get going in this direction, they start saying, well, you know, what if all of the, you know, parents who can afford to do so, leave our school district and then we'll have no money to serve the students that, you know, we're really committed to serving because we believe in educational equity. So, you know, that is just a dynamic that you see over and over and over again.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Erica Turner: I would say that oftentimes the number of parents they're concerned about leaving is actually pretty small. But I think the concern is a real one and people use it also to their advantage. So I have seen many parents go to school board meetings and say, you know, if you don't change the thing, bring back tracking… They, of course, don't call it tracking, like, bring back these classes for my kid.

Andrew: You’re talking about white parents.

Dr. Erica Turner: White or privileged parents. Sometimes they're just, you know, wealthy, they want the resources that they either feel entitled to or have access to, so they, they will threaten to do it whether they do it or not, of course, you know, we don't always know.

Andrew: Can, can you dig in a little more on this idea of White flight because there's a way in which it feels like so much of our education policy, just like currently is based around the fear of White flight. That we will, we will push for things that maybe are steps towards equity, but then they run up against this fear of White flight. So like puts a box around what is imaginable that you could achieve because of this fear of White flight. And it seems like the story is told that, you know, we, we had Brown v Board, we sort of eventually started through the force of litigation forcing schools to desegregate and then we had White flight.

And it, and it feels like in, in your book you talk a little bit about like that, that's not exactly how the story played out. That there were, you know these other sort of societal level factors pushing in like this… the suburbs did not emerge solely because of desegregation efforts. Can you talk a little bit about kind of like White flight and, and how, how real it is or how prevalent it is or how directly tied it is to simply the acts of racist White parents?

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, outside of education, the study of White flight, you know, has shown that there certainly are a lot of factors that contributed to the exit of many, especially middle class White people into the suburbs. There are many factors in it, but we see that movement even in places that didn't have school integration efforts. Many people wanted to move to the suburbs. Jobs were moving to the suburbs. The highways made it more possible. That's where you could get a subsidized house if you were White. So you could afford a bigger space for your child and kind of live that American dream. Not everyone could take advantage of that. At the same time, it's not that schools were inconsequential to that piece, whether it was efforts to desegregate city schools or you know, suburbs could also use their schools to appeal to families.

Andrew: We’ve got a new building. We, you know… fancier equipment. We have new…

Dr. Val: A kitchen.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, we have AP classes, we have these amazing sports fields that the, you know, city schools cannot afford, that's kind of how it looks today sometimes. So it's just, it's a complicated relationship. But I think there's, there's reason to think that White flight, such as it was, would've happened and did happen in places even where there wasn't school desegregation. And so, in part, what I, I want people to think about through the book is that there was this larger set of structures that was reinforcing these behaviors or allowing for them to happen for some people to move and others not.

I mean, I certainly think there are plenty of people who also wanted to stay where they were. And at the same time, cities were being disinvested in terms of the resources that were being put there. It's not like everyone wants to leave the city because it was such a horrible place. But it was just harder to do that because of the structural reasons, for many folks.

So when we just kind of blame White people for White flight I think the decisions they probably were making were many, a lot of them had to do with race, but not necessarily an entirely just because of racism in terms of beliefs, but because of an entire social system that was White supremacist where the opportunities were structured, not just kind of people's individual beliefs.

Andrew: Right. So efforts at school desegregation may have, you know, played some contributing role in some families leaving cities and moving to the suburbs, but there were many other factors happening at the same time. And it seems to me like the ways the educational system currently fears White flight is tied to this kind of fear of individual White family preferences. And, we've kind of ignored this more structural look.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I think a lot of parents think the schools are so in charge of things and I don't have an influence. But when you talk to a lot of principals, teachers, people inside schools, they're really scared of parents. They're especially scared of wealthier and White parents. Everyone's kind of a little bit intimidated by and thinks the other one has the upper hand. And one way I think that educators deal with that is they kind of say, oh, they're all just being racist.

And there are people who are for sure using their power and their privilege to get what they want. But to me it's always important where do we kind of identify the problem? And one thing that happens is if you identify as just those racist White parents then you don't try to address the larger structural system that gives those parents more power than low income parents or parents of color, immigrant parents. Right. Who aren't going to threaten to move to another school district. And if they did, probably that wouldn't be seen as a problem.

Andrew: One less needy kid that we have to try to try to spend our resources serving.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Something like that. Or just even like, you know, racism is that having White kids in your district is this kind of sense of legitimacy.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Erica Turner: So, that's where I wanna kind of, intervene in the conversation. And it's not to say, those parents aren't racist in the sense of having racist beliefs. They're certainly using power that accrues to them or influence that accrues to them based on their race. It's not, that isn't problematic, it's just kind of where are we training our attention to and to the exclusion of what other kinds of problems and concerns.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: I'm just thinking about how do we mitigate these feelings and concerns about these threats? Like what have you learned from folks in the face of these threats say we're still gonna press forward?

Dr. Erica Turner: So for these two, you know, urban districts that I looked at, kind of, how they understood it because they were using a White flight framework of what was happening, is they needed to market the diversity of their schools to these families. And I think, you know, in general saying like, we are a multicultural district, we value these things, it could be really positive. But because, and Maia Cucchiara and others have written about this idea, that they're actually, they want certain students and families to maintain. And it's what appeals to them as opposed to valuing the people who are actually in the school district.

So for one of them, which I call Milltown, they kind of said, we need to, you know, we need to market this. This is what businesses do all the time. They say what's good about their school system. So it was kind of coming from a sense of like, diversity is a positive thing, but then if you ask them what were those things they wanted to market, it was the things that they thought would appeal to these other kinds of families. And so, the message that they were sending was like, you can learn Chinese you know, you can take Italian. Well, there aren't really a sizable population of Chinese students in that community.

Andrew: That wasn’t the sell. It wasn’t like you should learn this language so that you can be more in community with the people who are already here. It was the what's gonna look good on your resume, what's gonna help you get into a better college? What's going to…

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew: … help your White kid stand out from the other White kids.

Dr. Erica Turner: Right. So, you know, and there's, there's ways that these ideas kind of mix together, right? So they kind of were like, yes, it's wonderful when children can get together. They can understand each other's cultures, and then also like, let's promote this Italian class, right?

And there's an example of both the kind of what I call like colorblind managerialism, or I might say race evasive managerialism now, 'cause color blindness is ableist language. But it was this kind of managerial approach to the problem, like, let's, you know, attract these customers, let's serve them what they want, and let's market our school system around diversity. I think there's like a good kind of core idea in there that like, we want to increase understanding, we wanna value who's here, that our schools should reflect that, but a surface way.

Andrew: I, I just wanna go back to race, race evasive managerialism. We have been struggling on the podcast to find ways to avoid the kind of ableist language of colorblind while not avoiding talking about because it is such a prevalent kind of mindset that is so problematic. Race evasive I love, thank you for that. We're gonna, we're taking that and running with it for sure. That's very, that's very helpful.

Can you, can you unpack that kind of race evasive managerialism, because I think it's, it's so powerful and the first time I read it in the book, it sort of went right over my head, so sort of like, you know, what, what is this kind of idea of managerialism and, and a version of it that is ignoring race.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's, it wasn't just in these two school districts, but more broadly. While we hold education in high regard, we also hold business in very high regard, and there's a sense that schools have been modeled after business at various points in time. So certainly, kind of the progressive era, the notion of a factory model for schooling. Right. Well now I'm arguing in many ways that schooling is being modeled off of a corporate or entrepreneurial version of business. The idea is that business does things right and schools as public institutions don't, but if we made schools look more like businesses, they would be more efficient and they produce better results. Right? And so, you know, accountability is an example of that, right? Let's just set our goals. Make them really clear, measure our progress, and then assess, have some consequences if we don't do that. Right? So that's a business approach, that's a kind of accounting approach you could do at Morgan Stanley, right?

The problem with that is without kind of any attention to race, you don't have an equal starting point, right? Like, the fact is that already the landscape is inequitable. No, not everyone has a chance to make that target that you've set or the resources to do so. And the target you've set may also be an inequitable one, right? Who gets to choose what that target is. And you're just setting up that system and you're not touching anything else. Right. So they'll say like, you know, our students, you know, of color, our English language learners are not doing as well. Let's look at the data.

And as a school board it's like, let's have all the principals come in and give us a report, how they're doing, what their progress is, what are they trying. So, you know, I often tell the story of, in Milltown, I went to the school board meeting and they had decided they were gonna bring every principal in. And they started with the principals of the schools that were the highest poverty schools. It was done in a kind of a way that was like, let's support the principals at these schools. There's, they're really important and we need to be paying attention to this.

So the principals would create these reports. And the school board is like you have the highest poverty school. You know this is really challenging. So here they are like pointing to these problems of poverty as being really intense. You have students whose first language isn't English, but they're being tested in English. And then they're like, so what are you doing? You know, and how can we support you? They had identified all these problems and their solution was totally detached from that. Like, we'll just keep looking at the data. And it was like, for me as an observer, I'm like the only person sitting in the school board meeting that day. It was just really like, what just happened? It's so boilerplate to do what they just did. And it's not like I'm against looking at data. I'm, you know, I'm a researcher. That's kinda what I believe in.

But the school board members felt really like, good about this. Like they're doing something, they're supporting the school. The school felt good that they were doing something. And I, so that's kind of the race evasive managerialism, you're doing these things and a lot of the structures are remaining in place. And, and doing those things is inequitable because those structures are remaining in place. Right? Kids are still in poverty, they're moving still. They don't have housing security. You're testing in a language they don't speak. Right? And so what that race evasive managerialism does, it allows educators to negotiate that tension.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Erica Turner: That we are working towards equity, which is, you know, you are not doing this job really for the money. Right. And so they do believe in that in a way, right? But at the same time, this race evasive managerialism, I argue, allows 'em to feel like they're doing something without really confronting those structural and political challenges that they face.

Andrew: And you wrote like, the data used seemed to play a crucial underlying function of demonstrating the efforts and the legitimacy of district leaders rather than providing a real solution to inequity.

You bring a lot of love to everybody who you talk about in the book, it feels like you're not, you're not bashing people and also pointing out the ways in which, 'cause I think these are structural issues. This is not a bunch of sort of, you know, malevolent actors at the district level saying, haha, we're gonna fool everybody into thinking that we are actually trying to fight inequity and doing it. But really the structures are set up to say, well, here are the things that are available to you. You can look at the data and then you can come back in three months and look at the data again. You can come back in three months and look at the data again, and maybe you'll see some trend lines, but what's needed is like more transformative changes.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah.

Dr. Val: So I'm over here making lots of faces because literally conversation last night. My husband's a teacher. And the theme for the year is, ‘excellence without exception’, something very corporate sounding. And they are focusing on looking at the data. And so everything you're saying right now, I'm like, ah, like it's the same. I don't, and I was like, well, what are you looking for? You know? I was just like…

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah,

Dr. Val: …what do people do then outside of looking at the data, like, what are you doing? You know, he's like that wasn't clear from the principal, you know, like what we're supposed to be doing. But there's an emphasis looking at the data and I guess….

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah.

Dr. Val: …making magic happen in that way.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Well I think there, there's a really big question. I've watched many of these kind of, let's look at the data things and sometimes it can help you pinpoint where there's an issue, but it's gonna be only a certain kind of issue but also it doesn't tell you what to do. So a lot of places, people just go back and they teach the same thing in the way.

Dr. Val: Exactly.

Dr. Erica Turner: And data can't tell you what to do.

Andrew: Louder or more quickly. [Andrew laughs]

Dr. Val: Or slower.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Yeah. It's not that there couldn't be some value in that but it's, it's limited. And maybe, you know, what data you're using is important too. Like, are you looking at how families feel about the school and what they might wanna see taught or what they see as the needs that their children have, or, you know, so many different kinds of data could be brought to some of those conversations that aren't right now.

Andrew: The power of this race evasive managerialism to, to make district leaders who, again, I think we've, we've said right, are, are broadly speaking, committed to doing the right thing. Want to improve education for all kids, want to increase equity in their districts. They're operating in an education system that we have put so much of society problems on, like we mentioned earlier, right? We asked the schools to solve all of these things. Well, you've got the kids anyway. Like why don't you handle the fact that we don't know how to actually have a multiracial democracy. Why don't you handle the fact that we don't know how to have healthy kids? We're gonna put all of that onto the schools.

And you have these people who care deeply, who, who work their way up to higher levels of administration and are in some ways stuck a little bit because, it seems to me that to solve these problems requires more than just the schools. That to meaningfully impact these systems, schools alone are not going to be able to fix it. That we have to all, as a society, as a community come together and say, we're going to try to fix it. And yet, schools are the places where sort of, these, these issues show up first, right? They get the sort of first crack at it. They're the first places that experience the kind of changing demographics, the first places that grapple with the inequities that we have.

And so, so yeah. So like, what do we do? I mean, the conclusion of your book is, is, you know, how do we live the reality well? So we have this reality, right? That, that we are having increasingly unequal and racially diverse society. Schools are kind of the, the, the focal point of this right now so how do we live, live that reality well?

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah, I mean a great question. And it's hard because basically I'm saying this is a structural problem and, you know, people always wanna know reasonably so, like what can individuals do about it? So I mean my big probably take home is we need to really be thinking and trying to act more on the structural pieces of things. And that is something that takes kind of people power rather than just an individual parent going and complaining to the school board or writing to Congress. And some of those things might be part of it, but that it really has to be, you know, groups of people acting together.

And we already actually see some of those things, like since the time I've written the book, right? Social movements are very vibrant right now. Black Lives Matter, the movement for Black Lives is the largest social movement we've had in the history of the United States. But there's also been other ones and many of those are oriented towards how do we make this a more just and inclusive society?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Erica Turner: So kind of join a social movement, it sounds like maybe not so tangible but, you know, social movements happen, you know, from people organizing, right. Talking to your neighbor, having a conversation about how can we work with that other neighbor, you know, to do the next piece of things. So, coffee conversations, book clubs, is… just can't stay at that point, right. It has to keep building.

Dr. Val: Nah, it seems like Integrated Schools, we're trying to build a little movement here.

Andrew: I mean, the other thing that feels powerful from the book is being able to recognize it, because I think there is such power in the appeal of this race, evasive managerialism and the appeal of feeling like you are doing something, feeling like we are making progress.

There's such appeal in sort of feeling that, and so I think that the more we can look honestly at the ways in which that is actually just keeping the status quo is, you know, the ways in which we are limiting the, the view of what's possible to anything that won't piss off the White parents. The more we can look at that and sort of have a, have a clear eyed view of that, the easier it is to sort of identify it and say, okay, hang on a second. And then for, for parents, particularly privileged parents, White parents to be able to say like, hang on, how can I interrupt this? How can I step out if I feel my inclination to be like, well, hey, you better gimme this, or I'm leaving. How can I stop myself in my tracks? If I hear somebody else talking about like, well, you know, what we should do is we should all get together and go and demand that such and such. To be able to kind of put the brakes on that and say, hang on a second, like, how are we thinking about this sort of structurally and systemically, rather than how do I get the best for my own kid?

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. And who's the we, right, that should go and do this. Right. Whose voices are included in that? And you know, I think that it's, it's, it's really true. We can even see some kind of sense that that has changed, right?

So, you know, I wrote the book and then Donald Trump was elected president. And I think it was kinda like, is colorblind or race evasiveness the problem or is it just blatant racism and White supremacy?

Dr. Val: Fair, fair question. [laughs]

Dr. Erica Turner: I think, you know, one, important thing is that I. That race evasiveness, uh, it lays the foundation for the return of more explicit White supremacy. Because what the race evasiveness says is racism isn't really a problem, or it's a very minute problem, right? It's a few people over there. It's not how we are organized structurally. But what we're seeing actually, you know, and again, I attribute this to groups like the movement for Black Lives is a greater understanding of racial inequality as a systemic thing. So people are actually more aware of that and, and kind of can question that ideology, their race evasive ideology more. Or the idea that like, race doesn't matter. And when they can question that more, they can see the structures that are the problem and then begin to kind of address them.

Andrew: But the fact that that is more easily accessible in society. The fact that more people are willing to, particularly more White people are willing to see that is also part of what creates this more, you know, sort of vociferous backlash against it.

Dr. Erica Turner: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, and the movement for Black Lives I think is great 'cause it's also been intersectional. And so , their analysis and the way that they talk about it is how these different systems can work in sync, right? That patriarchy and racism or White supremacy can work together. And it, it gives us a stronger analysis, but it also is a way to say, we all kind of have a stake in this.

Andrew: Right. We all have a stake in it, and we all have a role to play. I mean, I think it's, it's, it is true that it is a systemic issue and that we have to fix the system. But I think it's also true that we are the system, you know, that can't give us an excuse to say, well, it's just the system. What can I do and throw up our hands. That we make up the system. The system is responsive, particularly to more privileged people. And so that a sort of certain level of responsibility to try to shift the system.

Dr. Erica Turner: Maybe that's what we should expect is that the system will work like that. Unless we do something otherwise.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Erica Turner: To your point where the system, we can do it otherwise

Andrew: We're the system right.

Dr. Val: Yeah, feeling grateful and feeling grateful that your kids get to have these conversations with you all the time. I'm sure your dinner conversations are amazing about these particular topics. So, if you are boarding any young people, I have two, uh [laughs] and I can send them your way…

Andrew: Sending them off. Yeah. You got any extra space?

Dr. Val: That's right.

Dr. Erica Turner: Well it does take a community. We can have those conversations and sometimes…

Dr. Val: We can do an exchange.

Dr. Erica Turner: Sometimes they’d rather talk to someone else's parents than their own.

Andrew: For sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, deeply grateful to you. The book is great though. All the work done has just been so, uh, helpful. Certainly to me. I know lots of people who have been really influenced by your work and, and grateful for you coming on and spending the time and, and sharing with us.

Dr. Erica Turner: Thank you. I appreciate you both, and thank you for having me.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

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Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Dr. Val: I have a lot of questions. And I always appreciate is when our guests, you know, just make me dig into like my own assumptions or push me to think about things that I hadn't really thought about.

Before I get into that, I do want to shout out her parents again for being models of developing a critical consciousness in your young person and then what it means to live out your values. And to engage in the conversation with them as young people.

Andrew: And the impact that has down the road.

Dr. Val: That's what I'm saying, right?

Andrew: Yeah, so much of the brilliance that she brings stems from that. And we've seen that on so many episodes now. It's why I so enjoy the kind of what brought you here questions is because we often uncover some parent who was having some important conversations with the kid when they were little.

Dr. Val: You know what, now that we're talking, I think I'm going to assign, listening to these podcasts as a chore. Isn't that a great idea? That's how you do it.

Andrew: When we go on our family vacation, your kids are going to hate me.

Dr. Val: That's it. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing.

But one thing that gave me pause is the idea that education is responsible for solving all of our problems. And you and I talk about the opportunity that an integrated school, when done well, has for not only healing some pain that our country has experienced, but also helping to create the world that we want. And just that thought made me wonder if I, if I am expecting too much of our schools, especially when the adults who are leading them may have not had that experience, may not have the ability to help foster this idea. Am I asking too much of schools and that's like a big deal. You know, we're on the podcast to, to push these ideas, right?

Like our theory is that this is, this is going to work and this is the best way it can work. And I still believe that. I don't see another public square where we can do it in a way that's safe. That feels educational. That feels like we're still open enough in our spirits as young people to… like I just don't see it happening anywhere else and yet it's a big ask because it comes with the other things that young people are dealing with.

Andrew: Right. I mean in some ways I come back to this kind of like timeline question that I often think about, which is, you know, we often talk about this as generational work that, that what we are doing is like setting up the next generation to be a little better and then the generation after that to be better and the generation after that to be better.

And, and that's like a slow process and there's immediate trauma that needs to be addressed so there's some tension in that. And to create the conditions for a school to really play the role that I think we both imagine is possible does require other things besides just the school, requires a community coming together and really investing in a school, schools alone can't solve gun violence, schools alone can't solve poverty.

I think education is a potential way out of poverty eventually. But schools cannot solve the fact that we have such wide disparities in income in this country, and yet we ask them to every day. Schools can't solve for the fact that we have housing instability that, you know, a school pours into a kid and then two weeks later they move somewhere else because they can't stay in their current living situation. I think there are lots of ways in which we ask schools to do too much.

Dr. Val: Yeah, and and and that idea connects to something that she also said around Schools being like the closest form of government that many people experience. Right?

Andrew: Mm hmm.

Dr. Val: And, what are the expectations of the government to help solve these problems?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I am one that believes, I appreciate a government that helps keep the roads paved and the fire trucks around when we need them and helps educate our young people because we're all impacted by our young people and the skills that they have and the education that they have for the future of the country. Right? Like that all feels like an important government function and people might have different relationships with that.

Andrew: I mean, yeah, to me, that highlights the potential, at least, of schools because those are questions that we grapple with as a country, right? What is the appropriate size of the government? How much role should a government play? What are the problems that we need the government to solve because they are too massive for individuals to solve on an individual scale? And that is a huge source of tension in our politics.

Dr. Val: Mm hmm.

Andrew: And so for that to show up in schools is not surprising. And so I think, you know, again, this idea that that schools are this closest form of government, it's a place where we can start to try to work out those questions where we can start to have those conversations and say like, well, what is, you know, how, how much should we be putting on the school? How much should we be asking of the school? And anything, like even if you just believe that schools are there to teach… You can't learn if you're hungry. You can't learn if you don't feel safe. And so the school by default has to end up trying to solve for some of those.

Dr. Val: To get to its ultimate purpose, which is the kids learning.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: You know this takes me to another point in the conversation, and I know you appreciated it as well… the Ruby Bridges example that she gave. And specifically the way in which government showed up, in that instance was the armed guards helping her go to school.

Andrew: I thought it was so powerful. This idea kind of, you know, pulling back the frame from, from the Norman Rockwell painting, I mean, it's interesting, right. The painting is called the problem we all live with, which was also the title of the Nicole Hannah Jones, this American life series that, that certainly for me was like the thing that radicalized me and has me in this work in the first place. So it's interesting to come back to that, but I had never, never thought of that idea of like, pull the camera back. You see this sort of powerful, inspiring image of Ruby Bridges with the help of the government desegregating a school. But if you pull the camera back, you would see all of these White parents shouting at her, spitting, throwing bottles, and the role of the government in that situation was to get her in the building. It was like, what's the, what's the thing that we can do that is, that technically achieves this goal of quote unquote desegregation is we can march her into the building with armed guards, but the heart shift work…

Dr. Val: Mmmmm

Andrew: …the role of changing the hearts and minds of those White people who are shouting at her was sort of outside of the scope of what the government can do. There's a way in which the schools being the closest form of government to us is this powerful reminder that we all have a role to play and the government is also limited.

I think there's lots of things the government can do, is the best way to do, but it's also limited. The government can make it illegal to segregate the schools. The government can't change the hearts and minds in a way that makes it, makes it more likely that school desegregation leads to true meaningful integration.

Dr. Val: I just want the listeners to know that I just entered a place of reflection again thinking about Ruby Bridges and both of us have had six year olds, and I cannot imagine, cannot imagine sending my child into that situation, but knowing, like, it had to be somebody's child so that we could be where we are. Like, I cannot even fathom, like, the, the anguish.

Andrew: The fear.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Talk about muscular hope.

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh. That is, that's a lot. That's a lot. And you and I know, the government, like these employees, are still just regular people who get a chance to decide how they want to enact the policies, what policies feel important, who they will listen to, who they won't listen to, who they're privileging, right? And so, while we talk very broadly about government action or inaction, a lot of times, it's two or three gatekeepers at most…

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: …at most.

Andrew: Yeah. And, and I mean, yeah, for sure they get to decide who they listen to and who they don't. And there's so much inertia. There's so much culture and an expectation built in, you know, they are also floating in this specific example, like the stream of the fear of White flight. Right. So all those administrators are operating in a system where everything is telling them that you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't piss off the White people. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't lead us back into the days of White flight to the suburbs.

And I think one of the other things that, that I've certainly been sitting with since, since the conversation with Dr. Turner is this idea that I think our fears of White flight are overblown, that White flight was not solely a result of school desegregation attempts, but was, you know, even happened in places where there were no school desegregation orders. And for sure, there were some people who moved out when schools desegregated, but we have so much fear in our school system. It drives so many decisions. This like, whatever we do, we can't piss off the White people. So those administrators, those people who are getting into these sort of positions of power in the school district are at least limited in terms of the thinking and the expectations of what they can and can't do. And so they, it is up to them ultimately. And for them to break out of this like sort of mindset of fear of white flight, I think is a big step is like a big ask for them.

Dr. Val: Yes, and, you know, if I think about educational justice seeking people of all, racial backgrounds, I'm sure there's some tension. Like if I do lose the White folks, then I will lose resources for the young people who will remain. And so how much of it is strategic?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And how much of it is responding to fear, right? Because, unfortunately, the resources are a tangible thing. And, unfortunately, they're often tied to, I think, what was talked about in the episode as White children bringing legitimacy to a school.

This is a different type of White supremacy headache. Um, it's not like the normal one. [Andrew chuckles] It's, it's not, it's not a headache as much as it's just sad. It just, it's, it just, it saddens me, that we still think this way and we still respond this way. And, that fear is such a strong motivator

Andrew: Yeah, it's easy to sort of get depressed and get turned off and feel like the, the options are limited, which I think is, you know, a place where the power brokers that she focuses her, her work on end up also, I would imagine feeling somewhat stuck. And then, she says what they do is they turn to data. They turn to these business practices. And, I thought it was interesting, Jade Adia, last episode also mentioned this idea that maybe we glorify the disruptor a little too much. We glorify the business person a little too much when we're thinking about these things that are more related to humanity and to people and, and heartwork .

But, these administrators are like, well, I don't know what to do. Like, let's look at more data, you know, let's, let's do some more testing and let's do some more looking at it. And the data becomes the thing that they kind of hang on to as a way to deal, I think, with this kind of angst that we've come up against.

Dr. Val: Yeah. So, you know, this is another place where I feel some complexity around some of these ideas. I, I do think history has shown us that if we are not accountable to the results of, Black and Brown and under- resourced children, then they will get the short end of the stick.

Andrew: For sure.

Dr. Val: So there has to be some type of accountability for all young people. Because apparently just doing your best for all young people is not a thing. [both of them laugh] Um, I don't get it. But also I'm curious for you as a parent, what data would be important to you to know about your kid? And do you feel like schools are, are doing a good job of monitoring that data ?

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. This is probably like eight episodes of conversation about this, but, you know, sort of broadly, I think there's two questions there, right? One is like, what do I want to know to have a sense of like how my kid is doing? And then there's like the way that data gets weaponized in school choice marketplaces, you know, the kind of competition among schools. And so I think that the information that we provide ends up taking this kind of outsized significance when it becomes used for that kind of like school competition thing.

So setting the school competition piece aside, the things that are like interesting to me, you know, I want to know, is my kid reading in third grade? I want to know, does it seem like they are trying their best at school?

Dr. Val: Mmmhmm.

Andrew: And are they being exposed to content that is challenging to them? And those things feel a little bit squishy. I'm sure you could sort of gather data that would reflect those things, but they feel much squishier than what are your, you know, statewide testing scores. I don't care about that. Certainly, like what scores the average kid at my school got on those tests are not relevant to me.

Dr. Val: Mmmhmm.

Andrew: So I think there's ways in which the data that we do have is like relatively easy to digest and easy to share, but not super useful to me in terms of thinking about what do I want for my kids?

Dr. Val: , I agree and the older my kids get, the more I'm like will they be okay at the next level, but I don't… that certainly isn't measured by a standardized test for me.

Andrew: Yeah. The other piece that I sit with is just like, the stakes are so much lower for my kids. You know, I don't know what the current research is. It's something like 20 percent of your standardized test score is attributable to a school.

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh!

Andrew: 80 percent of it is about your home life.

Dr. Val: That is wild. And so, it seems like different measures are require. And I think that also would lead to a different type of leadership as well, right? Because if you are looking at accountability about test scores, then you can take a management perspective. You can say, work harder, move this lever, you know, turn this lever off.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: But if, if we're looking at different measures, measures that parents say, like, here's what's really important to my young person, and to me as a, and my family, then maybe that, that'll drive some of the change that we're looking for.

Andrew: Right? Because the managerial approach hasn't worked, right? Like we've been trying it and it hasn't actually, I mean, you know, we've moved the needle a little bit. There's been some improvement and, and there are certainly pockets where people are doing incredible work. And this is not to say that, you know, like every school administrator is failing kids. I don't think that's true at all. There are definitely places where this is happening, but like systemically, when we think about kind of, you know, broadly the education system, we have tried this approach of managerialism. And I think the fact that we have ignored race in it, we've done this race evasive managerialism that Dr. Turner talks about is part of why we haven't actually moved the needle because if you're not actually taking into account people's full humanity, you're not taking into account all the things that they are trying to bring with them into a school setting, then you're not going to be able to reach them. You're not going to be able to actually move the needle.

Dr. Val: Yeah. One thing I appreciated from Dr. Turner was I did feel like there was hope always, but that there's a path and that being a part of movements because we recognize that is the way we get the change that we're looking for. And that we have to, to step away from just our individual contributions only. Right. We can, we can write, I can write a good email. I can, and I can push for change, but when I'm in community with other people, especially ones across difference and we're all pushing for that change, then I think the likelihood of the change happening feels more real.

Andrew: Yeah. That's when we start to actually shift the system, right? Yeah. I mean, I also took some, some sort of hope from that idea. Like we, we are the system. The system needs to be changed, but we are the system and we can change it. But we don't change it by focusing on getting the right thing for just our kids, we change it by linking arms. By coming together and saying what are, what things are important to you, here's what's important to me, let's like work together to change the system, rather than create this carve out for my own kid, let's like change the system so that it better serves all kids. And that does feel hopeful.

Dr. Val: And , I think that that goes to our theme this year of like perseverance. Right. Just the power of being able to, to join up with folks. As a lone person, you know, it's hard to get that systemic change that you're looking for.

Andrew: Yeah. So listeners, how are you thinking about these systemic changes? How do you show up for systemic changes? How do you think about advocating for all kids and linking arms with other people and trying to actually change the system because, because it is the system that needs to change. We want to hear about it. Send us a voice memo.

Dr. Val: Please!

Andrew: Speakpipe.com/integratedschools, S P E A K P I P E dot com, speakpipe.com/integratedschools and let us know what you're thinking. We'd love to hear from you.

Dr. Val: Absolutely. And please, listen to this episode and share it and engage in conversation with others. As you know, we are constantly grappling with these big ideas, question your own assumptions and really dig into what you believe and what you're, what's worth fighting for.

Andrew: Absolutely. And if you enjoyed the episode or any of our other episodes, head on over to Patreon and throw us a few bucks every month. We would be grateful for the support. Patreon.com/integratedschools. It is how this podcast stays alive. We are very grateful for those of you who have been there. We've got a happy hour coming up soon. We would love to see you there. So come and join us. We would be grateful.

Dr. Val: Happy hour is virtual and it's usually at lunchtime. So come join us.

Andrew: Come join it. It's always a good time. Well, Val, uh, once again, a great conversation. It made me think in new ways. And as always, I'm grateful to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.

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