Displaced Students and Trust

“How do young people embody disruption and mobilize their fortitude for survival?"

This review of research seeks to explore and offer equitable solutions to how racial segregation undermines democracy and fair education for America’s youth.

The research conducted by Fine, Greene, and Sanchez involves a research team spanning the research institution and the community (TallBear, 2014; Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018). The community is involved from a legal perspective through interviews and the use of data regarding school closings and student experiences. Fine et al.’s research asks the community to be involved in collecting research data and interpreting the community's needs before presenting a conclusion to the proposed dilemma (2018). The legal and governing systems presiding over the lower-income schools want to impose longer school days to solve a problem in the education system.

Researchers conducting a CBPR (community-based participatory research) study could gather accurate data using a “democratic knowledge production” (TallBear, 2014). The subjects or participants of the textbook’s research are assumed to benefit or be injured by the decisions of a governing institution and should be included in determining the necessary elements for research. CBPR, as applied in Fine, Greene, and Sanchez’s study, appeals to the literature as an approach to solidarity with the human subjects that are more likely to be most profoundly affected within the locus community (2018). The textbook takes an ethical upper hand by studying the culture of the agencies closing schools alongside the culture and generational impacts of the displaced students (Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018).

The researchers ask how our findings change the lives of displaced students, their families, and future generations in this community. The multidimensional approach to research involving community members, governing agencies, researchers, and others alongside the research is a moving approach to social science studies.

1. Research Findings

Impoverished communities experienced an onslaught of school closings from 2000-2012, with over 20,000 in nearly a decade. Students with the highest need for academic and emotional intervention and the lowest financial support are pushed aside and displaced (Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018). Displaced students, like orphans, lose their trust in authority and academia. Education reform and budget cuts disproportionately in urban school districts with majority Black and Latinx populations, pulling the unstable legs right out from under students with the highest risk (Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018).

The idea that displaced students from a “home” institution feel rejection and lose trust is common sense. One of the critical aspects of trust is accessibility. Students ask themselves questions like:

Is my school available for me? Does my school offer a safe place? Does my school respond to my requests for help and attention? Does my school care about me? Does my school notice when I am missing? Does my teacher take time to get to know my family? Etc… etc.

These trust questions can quickly be answered without the data for empathic researchers and laypersons. Without access to the classroom and people in the school community, trust cannot survive; add the high teacher turnover for low-income schools that remain open, and there is a recipe for disaster and complete mistrust.

Another aspect of this research that struck me but was not directly mentioned is the sense of belonging experienced in schools. If students do not feel their school represents them culturally, how does this affect their sense of belonging to the educational system? I can also agree with and accept the research that spending more time in schools that fail to nurture the whole student population is not beneficial (Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018). For example, empathic and ethical Social workers and court systems would not recommend that a child suffering abuse at home spend more time in that same destructive environment.

When acting in good conscience, the system would remove the child from the abusive environment and put the abuser on trial.

As social science and humanities researchers, we know this is not always true. Abusers are often awarded custody over their victims while governing agencies designed to protect the marginalized or weak and powerless look the other way. But hopefully, we can agree that spending six hours a day in a destructive environment is terrible, and spending 8 hours a day in that same environment is worse. The environment has to change. The governing agencies have to reform. The children have to be considered first and foremost. Under-educating students from marginalized cultures and lower incomes only increases barriers to higher education, career placement, and family health (Fine, Greene, & Sanchez, 2018). In the most basic terms, when humans make mistakes, they have to make changes or the mistakes compound.

Caroline Estes is a Sociology and Humanities researcher who explores the connection between economic stability, educational satisfaction, and matriculation. Her research attempts to answer the question: How do we solve America’s problem of chronic miseducation in marginalized communities?

References

Fine, Greene, and Sanchez (2018). “Wicked problems,” “flying monkeys,” and pre(car)ious

lives: A matter of time? In Just research in contentious times: Widening the

methodological imagination. Authored by Michelle Fine, 49-70. New York: Teachers

College Press.

TallBear (2014). “Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to

Inquiry.” Journal of Research Practice 10(2), Article N17.

http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/405/371