Current research on discipline and academic tracking reveal that Girls of Color (GoC) are some of the most academically marginalized students in K-12 settings. They experience school discipline at disproportionately higher rates than their peers and are more likely to be tracked out of advanced courses. Yet, in spite of their negative schooling experiences, GoC persist and maintain high postsecondary aspirations. This case study provides a critical investigation into the perspectives and academic engagement of adolescent GoC—also called Black and Brown girls— who are tracked in low academic courses (e.g., remedial and general classes) and disciplined formally and informally (e.g., public castigation, suspension, expulsion). Here, GoC are those who identify as Latina, Black, Pacific Islander, Asian, Native American girls from poor- and working-class backgrounds.
This study employs intersectionality as a conceptual framework to examine how Black and Brown adolescent girls engage in school when they experience punishment and exclusion. It illuminates the types of knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes that GoC employ to participate in the academic process and obtain their postsecondary goals. Additionally, drawing from multicultural epistemologies developed by Women of Color, this work explores how Black and Brown girls at the intersection of multiple marginalized oppressions use their identity to shape their academic engagement and postsecondary aspirations.
This dissertation is a multisite qualitative case study using data from the Lavender Girls Project (LGP), an intersectional research project on the schooling experiences of 32 adolescent GoC who have been tracked out of advanced courses and disciplined. It is situated across five Title I high schools in California (Inglewood, Anaheim, Long Beach), Tennessee (Nashville), and New York (Brooklyn) between 2015 and 2018. During data collection, 5-7 semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted at each site and more than 400 student artifacts total were gathered for analysis. Participants reported feeing pathologized and villainized in school because of their identities as Black and Brown girls from poor- and working-class families, which adversely impacted their academic engagement. However, despite having negative experiences in school, most of the participants claimed to have high academic aspirations and positive perceptions of their identities. Specifically, this study reveals that the strengths-based orientation of GoC around their identities helped them strategies ways to subvert meritocratic notions of achievement, engage academically on their own terms, and navigate systemic barriers.
