From Neoliberal Turnaround Toward Liberatory Cultivation: Countering Color-Evasive School Reforms Through Equitable Partnerships For Educational Justice
Abstract This critical ethnographic case study is focused on centering racial equity in efforts to improve schools labeled as low-performing, providing a counternarrative to the color-evasive, neoliberal policies that have dominated school improvement and Turnaround reforms over the past two decades. The research seeks to examine partnerships between community leaders, school leaders, and district leaders toward racial equity and educational justice and explore the conditions that support diverse stakeholders in co-creating liberatory policy and practice. Through a theoretical framework incorporating Critical Race Theory and Thirdspace Theory, and a conceptual framework drawing upon Community Equity Literacy, Community Cultural Wealth, and Boundary-Spanning Leadership, the author explores multiple facets of Equity work in a large urban public school district in the United States. The primary aim of this doctoral dissertation is to contribute to academic literature that informs research and practice in enacting liberatory, anti-racist practices to advance educational justice in school systems that have historically failed students and communities of color.