Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner

Beyond School-to-Prison Pipeline and Toward an Educational and Penal Realism

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the school-to-prison pipeline and the sanitized discourse of “death by education,” called the achievement gap. Additionally, there exists a longstanding discourse surrounding the alleged crisis of educational failure. This article offers no solutions to the crisis and suggests instead that the system is functioning as it was intended—to disenfranchise many (predominately people of color) for the benefit of some (mostly white), based on economic principals of the free market. We begin by tracing the economic interests of prisons and the prison industrial complex, juxtaposing considerations of what we call the “educational reform industrial complex.” With a baseline in the economic interests of school failure and prison proliferation, we draw on the critical race theory concept of racial realism, to work toward a theory of educational and penal realism. Specifically, we outline seven working tenets of educational and penal realism that provide promise in redirecting the discourse about schools and prisons empowering those interested in critically engaging issues of racism that permeate U.S. orientations to education and justice.

No! The team ain't alright! The institutional and individual problematics of race

Critical race theory (CRT) has been a framework used to better understand practice and research in education. Leading scholarship in CRT has called upon researchers and practitioners interested in CRT for education to attend to the tenets of CRT beyond counter-storytelling. The article begins with a counterstory to make sense of race as it manifests in one teacher education program in the Midwest in particular, and in teacher education programs more broadly. Analysis of the counterstory moves beyond the story itself, exploring ‘holes’ that implicate the ‘institution’ and the ‘author’ as contributing to racism. Using the CRT tenets of whiteness as property, and an expansive versus restrictive view of anti-discrimination, the author interrogates the way in which racism manifests in pre-service teacher education, and how his behavior has been complacent in institutional racism and maintaining white privilege. Finally, thoughts are offered that speak to how educators might approach anti-racist stances.

Capturing the Moment to Debunk the Crisis

Despite the unparalleled trauma associated with the Sandy Hook Shootings, school shootings are neither uncommon nor relegated to the contemporary moment. The first documented U.S. school shooting o...

Mapping the margins and searching for higher ground: examining the marginalisation of black female graduate students at PWIs

ABSTRACT The number of Black females enrolled in colleges and universities has grown in recent years, particularly at predominately white institutions (PWIs). Currently, research on the rise of Black females at PWIs is limited and fails to adequately address the emotional, social, and mental well-being of these students. Recent studies also largely ignore the critical roles that natural and formal Black female faculty play in serving as a buffer between Black female graduate students (BFGS) and PWIs more broadly. From a critical perspective using counter-narrative, we address the limitations of the scholarly literature on BFGS and other challenges faced by BFGS. We come to the disappointing – albeit unsurprising – conclusion that PWIs should do more to make the academy a welcoming place for BFGS, however, the ways in which PWIs function make support for BFGS unlikely. We conclude with a discussion about the implications of continued marginalisation of BFGS at PWIs for individuals, families, communities, disciplines, and for PWIs across the nation.