Miller_Pazia_Thesis_Final-Pazia

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(Re)producing Race and Class in Neoliberal Times: A Case Study of White Plains High
School
Pazia Miller
Senior Seminar: Knowledge, Practice, Power
December 20, 2013

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To the people of White Plains—
With hope that, together, we can build a more equitable and just community
Especially to the interview participants—
Thank you for your bravery, your integrity, and for sharing your stories. Without you, this project would
not be possible

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Your silence will not protect you.
--Audre Lorde

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Introduction
Recent years have seen intensifying disparities between the rich and the poor as well as a
strong political focus on education reform as a means of ameliorating this gap. While many
studies have been conducted about urban schools, suburban schools are often overlooked as sites
in which economic inequality is (re)produced. This paper focuses on the experiences of alumni
in a semi-suburban space in neoliberal time. More specifically, it outlines the political economy
of White Plains, NY, from that draws data and interviews racialized and classed stories of
engagement and disengagement and in the White Plains School District, and determines that
school serves the function of a neoliberal agenda of presenting false equal opportunity and
instead enforcing classes that already exist.
In a suburban school district in which there is one school, this paper argues that subject
identifies are reified within one institution in ways that are reflective of the geography of the
economy. White students tend to be engaged and supported into higher tracks, while Black and
Latin@ students tend to not receive academic support in the school culture and are tracked on
lower tracks. All of the tracks converge in one school and work to replicate the economy--an
economy of centers and margins, of a generally professionalized white class, a service-oriented
class of people of color, and sometimes criminalization rather than work for Black or Latin@
men--in which the school exists.
This paper first overviews the methods used in deconstructing the research question and
my position within the research process. It next outlines White Plains as a geopolitical space and
the school district in the town. Following, this paper analyzes data about racialized tracking in
the school district, and then analyzes the stories of interviewees about their experiences in the

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school district. This section looks specifically at tracking, failure, the protection of whiteness,
and security. Finally, this paper posits the school as a site of the neoliberal agenda.
Methodology
As a graduate of White Plains High School, I have been given plenty of opportunities to
meet up with old classmates and see the different trajectories our lives have taken. This past
summer, I worked for a prison monitoring nonprofit organization. One of my responsibilities
was to conduct interviews and collect data on prison visits. On the second visit, I interviewed a
man who had been a graduate of White Plains High School a year before me. He informed me
that he had only been in prison for a few months and had already seen many other men from
White Plains in prison. The jarring reality of the school-to-prison pipeline, which had seemed to
not touch the ‘affluent’ country of Westchester, became apparent. My initial question was: what
happened to him? Or, what had happened to me? More importantly, how were we shaped, and
did we shape, our own identities such that I am a graduating senior at Barnard College and he is
in prison, even though we both went to the same high school?
I came to develop my question more distinctly. I began to see the school as an institution
that acts upon students’ identities, and students leave operating within various levels of power in
higher education or in varying job markets. My classmate ended up in prison while I was in
college. Many individuals were on different points in the spectrum in between these—whether it
be different levels of college completion, service industry, domestic work, in the technology
industry, or unemployment. Thus, my question became: how can I understand how processes of

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support and disengagement, investment and disinvestment, and tracks to university, the job
market, and to prison converge within the same institution?
In order to answer this question, I decided to conduct interviews with graduates of White
Plains High School to collect stories about how they understood their time in and after school.
For a varied sample, I talked with individuals from a range of different class years. The most
recent graduates were from the class of 2012, while graduates from the class of 2003 were the
most removed. The youngest was 19 and the oldest was 28. While I attempted to create a
sample of individuals who were people I do not know, it was difficult to create a random sample
of subjects because of we attended the same school and had been so institutionally separated that
it was difficult to get in touch with individuals who had not been on my track. Therefore, some
of the interviews conducted were with people I was familiar with, and others were with people I
did not know. However, each individual had value contributions to make about their experiences
in the White Plains School District.
The eight interview subjects encompassed a variety of lived identities. Three were white,
three were black, and two described themselves as Hispanic and Puerto Rican. A couple
identified as mixes of many of these categories. They ranged from professional class to working
class to poor. Five were living independently, three lived with their parents, and two had been
homeless. Five still lived in White Plains, one lived in Boston, and another in Queens and in the
Bronx. Five were employed, in both formal and informal economies, two were students, and two
were unemployed. Most identified as straight, most identified as cisgendered and one
transgendered. Two identified as religious while the others did not. Four had been honors level
students and three had not. None had been classified as English Language Learners.

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In addition, all of the alumni interviewed had experienced different tracks in the school
district. Three had been fully tracked as honors students, while the rest had struggled to be
placed in some honors classes, while others had not. No interviewees had been tracked into
special education. The broad range of tracking experiences spoke to the multitude of
experiences and identities interacting within the proposed trajectories for students.
The names of all of the individuals interviewed have been changed to protect the
identities of all of the individuals who took part in the project. For the sake of clarity, I will
provide a quick demographic profile of each of the individuals. They are listed in the order in
which they appear in the paper:
1. Mel, Class of 2007: Half white, half black, unemployed and enrolled in graduate school,
straight woman, now living with her parents in White Plains
2. Katie, Class of 2007: White, working class, college graduate, straight woman, now living
in the Bronx.
3. Matt, Class of 2010: White, professional class, straight man, now living in Boston where
he is enrolled in college.
4. Brandon, Class of 2009: Black, working class college graduate, currently unemployed
straight man, currently living with his parents in White Plains.
5. Gabriel, Class of 2012: Self-described Hispanic, service industry worker, currently
employed transgendered man living on his own in White Plains
6. Andres, Class of 2011, Self-described Hispanic, service industry worker, finished some
college, currently employed and living on his own in White Plains
7. Linda, a current Spanish teacher at White Plains High School, a white woman and mother
8. Mike, Class of 2003, White, straight man, professional class college graduate, currently
unemployed and living in Queens
While I interviewed a broad range of individuals, my time and resources were limited to
complete this project. These limitations determined the number of individuals that took part in
interview processes, as well as the capacity for follow-up interviews. While these individuals
spoke from their own experiences, their experiences cannot be representative of the whole
school, nor can they be assumed to be quantitative data to determine the results of racialized

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educational tracking initiatives. Rather, these individuals are members of an oral history project
that seeks to remember the ways they feel like they navigated high school.
The questions for the interviews were divided into four different categories:
introductions, high school memories, tracking, and school security. The questions were broad
and provided opportunities for many different answers. For example:
 What are some of your most prominent high school memories?
 What were, if any, your interactions with security?
 How did you end up in the levels of classes you were in and how do you remember those
classes?
 Who were your favorite teachers and why?
 How have your priorities changed since and after high school?
I would ask follow up questions to clarify answers. I was particularly interested in bringing
forward how racialized, class-based, and gendered dimensions shaped the interviewees’ stories,
and I tried to illuminate this in the follow-up questions. In many circumstances, the conversation
departed from the intended questions to broader discussions of stories and understood meanings
behind them. What resulted was a set of themes that was related to, yet markedly different from
the determined categories for the paper.
In the interviews, I attempted to hold conversations based upon the commonality that we
all went to the same high school. In this way, I tried to create a rapport by being able to refer to
specific localities and memories of White Plains (including institution-specific acronyms and
reference to local history) in order to allow us to open up and have a comfortable dialogue. The
context of the shared high school and shared hometown was incredibly beneficial in creating a
space in which interviewees could speak relatively openly about their stories.
While we were able to connect over a shared institutional past, it is critical to note that,
especially in this study of primarily race, gender, and class, our identities provided specific

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lenses through which our conversations could take place (Lopez, 11). My identity as a white,
college-educated, professional class queer woman was critical in determining the ways in which
I had conversations with each individual and, ultimately, the data I was able to collect. In their
discussions about reflexivity and presuppositions in the ethnographic process of studying
transgendered youth, researcher Tey Meadow states, “Gender could render me suspect, ally, or
even data, depending on who was on the other side of my table” (Meadow, 8). Similarly, my
whiteness allowed for identification or disidentification, or even to become the studied subject in
my own research. The white alumni with whom I spoke tended to be more hesitant to implicate
themselves in their narratives, yet were much more comfortable describing racialized incidents
when they knew they could comfortably talk to another white person. The people of color with
whom I spoke had to take more time to explain what otherwise could have been understood in a
story when explained to someone else who had experienced it. Furthermore, it is important to
realize that my positionality has influenced what kinds of questions were asked and the level of
comfort with which they were answered. How do you explain racism and classism to someone
who has not experienced it in this setting? What is the level of trust me, the researcher?
Although I was able to gain a comfortable rapport in the interviews, these dynamics impacted the
data and oral histories I was able to collect for the project.
I am not a native to the school district. I moved around a lot and my family moved into
one of the new luxury apartment buildings a week before school started when I was beginning
high school in 2006. Having not taken any placement tests to get into honors courses, and
having no recommendations from my teachers in upstate New York, I was automatically placed
into Regents level1
courses. My father, an assertive speaker and a doctor, had been angry that I
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New York State Board of Education language for non-honors, non-special education courses

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was placed into Regents. He demanded that I be placed into honors courses. Apart from taking
one math placement test (I did not test into honors), on his word alone I was placed on the honors
track in White Plains High School for every other subject. I am sure, if it had not been for that
experience, I would not be where I am today. My initial moments in the school district were able
to show me the type of power that I, as an upper class woman with parental support, could wield
in this institution. This story has been integral in my understanding of what it means to have
power in an institution. This is how I was tracked and it shapes the way that I view power,
tracking, and racialization in White Plains High School. I include my own story in my research
so that the reader can understand my own experiences within the same system as the
interviewees.
Inequality in the Globalized Suburb
The mayor of White Plains, Joseph Delfino, said, "Our dream was to design a city that if
you lived here or visited here, you didn't have to go anywhere else. I think we've met that
objective" (Santos). White Plains, as a city located approximately 30 miles from midtown
Manhattan, functions both in tandem and independently of New York City. As its own
economic and social space that is intricately connected to the New York City economy, the
suburb of White Plains displays many qualities of a global city. White Plains is an economic
center that has seen the rise in international corporate business and has developed its scope of
luxury living. It has expanded to include urbanites working in Manhattan, working in business
and corporations in White Plains, and the low-wage laborers who are working in service

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industries and working for corporate workers. White Plains bridges the distinctions between a
small, intimate town and a large city, yet it finds itself inextricably connected to the global
economy.
Saskia Sassen posits the globalized city as one of centers and margins that have not only
become geographically overlapped but are dependent upon one another to exist. The “core” and
“periphery” are centered within one another in close proximity such that the economic “core”—
or the center of business and capital, can only exist because of the day to day work of low-paid
laborers, or the "periphery" (Sassen, The Global City, 81). With the upward concentration of
wealth, manufacturing cities are in decline. The global city has only come to exist because of the
shift in wealth towards financial services and business, and the invisiblized economies that
support it.
The result of globalization has been the concentration of wealth in certain cities. Within
these cities, there is a service economy that supports the business, wealth, and luxury of the
increasingly rich. The "peripheralization" of inner cities occurs at the center of the city, or in the
inner city, which is organized to support the labor of the city itself (Sassen, A New Geography of
Centers and Margins, 71). The city today is not only a paradox of both rich and poor, but it is a
concentration of many different rich and poor workers. The globalized city can only exist
because of the expansion of a high-income workforce and the availability of a low-wage worker
base (Sassen, A New Geography of Centers and Margins, 85).
As White Plains is experiencing the qualities of a globalized city, it is still a suburb of
New York, one of the iconic cultural and economic centers of the world. White Plains has
historically been contained within a county that, in 1912, the county Republican leader William

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L Ward, wanted to attract “class” rather than “mass” (Danielson and Doig, 79). Westchester had
enacted exclusionary zoning laws in the 20th
century, such as bans on multiple family housing
and limitations on apartment uses, to maintain the exclusivity and rural feel of the county.
However, the cities in Westchester (including White Plains, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mt.
Vernon, and Mt. Kisco) had largely been left out of the processes of exclusionary zoning
(Danielson and Doig, 80). Therefore, White Plains was able to develop as a more
commercialized center in Westchester, functioning with New York City.
The stereotypes of suburbs have been that they are traditionally elite is changing. After
World War II, there was a suburban boom with growing black suburbanization. The increase in
the size of the black middle class supported black migration to the suburbs (Jones-Correa, 183).
Increasingly, as well, immigrants have come to settle in suburbs (Jones-Correa, 184). Even
though Westchester has been an elite space that has been zoned to be exclusively available to
those who could afford it, centers without exclusionary zoning, especially White Plains, have
become centers for middle-class or even lower-middle class people of color to live. Rather than
the typical White suburb, White Plains has been able to develop into a small city, experiencing a
variety of economies to support both the affluence and lower-income or service industries.
White Plains was initially settled as a small, self-sustaining town, then became a
commuter suburb, and has since been developed into a small metropolis due to a series of
developments from the 1940s to the present. The first round of “revivals” in White Plains took
place between the 1940s-60s, when expressways were first built through White Plains. The
construction of expressways allowed for affluent people living in the cities to live further from
work. At the same time that New York City business people moved in, White Plains became a
local retail capitol. Macy’s opened in downtown White Plains in 1949, marking a turning point

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when other local and corporate businesses emerged, such as B. Altman & Co., Rogers Peet, Saks
Fifth Avenue, and Alexander’s. At this same time, many corporations began to see the benefits
of locating their businesses to White Plains. In the 1950s, large corporations such as PepsiCo,
General Foods, Nestle, Hitachi, and Heineken moved their headquarters to White Plains (“About
the City”)
As the population of White Plains grew and the town continued to develop, the city
created an urban renewal program to recreate the central business district. During the 1970s, the
city built the Westchester County Courthouse, the Galleria mall, and the tallest office building
between New York City and Albany, the Westchester One building. The Galleria Mall brought
business development around the center of the city. At this time, the small suburb began to
develop its own city identity. The introduction of the Galleria Mall brought a new wave of
business growth and downtown offices (“About the City”).
The most recent urban growth projects took place in the late 1990s through
today. During this time, the Westchester Mall and the City Center were constructed, resulting in
five malls in radius of a couple of miles. Luxury goods stores, such as Neiman Marcus, Barneys,
and Whole Foods opened with the opportunity to expand their markets to White Plains. The
results of the rise of corporate business and high-end retail was the growth of luxury apartment
buildings, including a Trump Towers built in 2003, and, most recently, a Ritz Carlton completed
in 2008. This housing was built market-rate in spaces where more than half of the housing was
subsidized (Eddings, A1).
Because of the increase in development, business opportunities, and housing, the
population of White Plains has been expanding. In 1990, the Census reported a population of

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48,737, that increased by 9.38% to 53,307 in 2010, and again to 56,853 in 2010. It is projected
to have increased by 1,000 since 1990 (United States Census Bureau). Of the estimated 57,000
residents of White Plains (United States Census Bureau), about 10% are living below the poverty
line. This is about half of the percentage of people living under the poverty line in New York
City, it is significantly higher than neighboring towns, such as the 2% of people living under the
poverty line in Scarsdale or the 5% living under the poverty line in Mamaroneck. However, it is
in the middle of some other Westchester cities, such as New Rochelle, at about 8%, and Yonkers,
at about 12%. In addition, the median household income is $76,000, with the majority of people
earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year (United States Census Bureau). While there are
not quite as many poor people in White Plains in comparison to New York City, it is important
to note that there is a wide range of people with different income levels and from different
industries participating in the multiple economies. Similarly, the city is about 65% White, 15%
Black, and 30% Latin@ (United States Census Bureau). While there is a significantly higher
percentage of White individuals living in White Plains than in New York City, it is important to
note that White Plains is much more racially and economically diverse than the traditional white,
affluent suburb.
If we are to accept White Plains as a burgeoning model for a global city, then we must
accept the vast inequalities that continue to exist as a part of the model for what it means to be a
suburb inextricably tied into worldwide forces of globalization. These inequalities conflate into
the city's single public school district.

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The White Plains School District
The White Plains School District is divided into nine different schools: five elementary
schools, one sixth grade school, one for seventh and eighth grade (which was formerly two
middle schools grades 6-8), one high school and one alternative school, and an adult continuing
education outside of the city with other districts. The district boasts that it offers a variety of
programs for its 7,000+ students (“Controlled Parents’ Choice Program”), including smaller
class sizes than other comparable school districts, specialized programs, an enrichment program
starting in 3rd
grade, five different foreign languages, strong music opportunities, a strong special
education program, and a policy that allows for parents to choose where they send their children
to elementary school (“About Our Schools”).
The school district’s demographics vary from that of White Plains, the city, even though
its boundaries are contiguous. From 2011 to 2012, 31% of students identified as White, 18% of
the students identified as Black, and 47% identified as Hispanic or Latin@. The largest
difference in demographics is that, while the school is 31% White, the city is about 65% White.
This percentage is almost twice as high. Similarly, about 32% of the students in the White Plains
School District are eligible for free lunch, and another 6% are eligible for reduced lunch, while
only about 6% of the population of White Plains receives SNAP benefits (although data about
how many families are eligible for it is not readily accessible). The differences recorded might
be accounted for by the influx of (presumably) White gentrifiers living in luxury housing in
White Plains and the relatively high numbers of affluent white families that send their children to
private schools.

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The demographics of the school district mostly describe families in White Plains—and
while some are involved in international businesses in White Plains, many work in other more
localized industries around the town. It follows that the school district is more representative of
the middle class to poor families in the area, and more representative of people of color living in
the city than of White people.
The enrollment at White Plains High School has steadily stayed at about 2100-2200 over
the past few years. In comparison to other schools, White Plains High School was given a high
educational index (“White Plains Senior High School”), which is a large calculation of many
factors that are supposed to be reflective of norms, values, interpersonal relationships, social
interactions, and organizational structures within a school. It is calculated by weighting many
factors that fall into four categories: safety, teaching and learning, interpersonal relationships and
the institutional environment. Some of these factors include teacher retention, dropout rates,
violence, student achievement, and available programs for different students (National School
Climate Center). Compared to schools across the country, White Plains High School ranked
very highly and has won awards for being a top school.
At White Plains High School, the majority of students pass New York State tests. The
average cumulative SAT score is 1537 for students who take the SAT. Additionally, the district
offered APs to 493 students in 2012 (“White Plains Senior High School”). For all purposes,
statistically, White Plains High School is a good school with money to support many good
faculty and programs.

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The School in the Geopolitical Space
The school is a particularly important institution because it is responsible for reproducing
regional culture, class culture, and the structure of the society in which the school exists (Willis,
60). It is a critical institution of reproducing the economy it is a part of to reproduce the
economy it is a part of (Willis, 60 and Choi, 275) because the school is the institution for
preparing students—both knowledge preparation and culturally, this happens on many levels.
In his ethnography, Willis discusses how the school not only academically prepares
working class students to be reproduced into the working class, but it also talks about how the
school culture is one that is replicative of shop culture. In that school, certain aspects of “tough”
masculinity are valued, embodied, and enacted in ways that are supportive of going into factory
work (Willis, 52). This study was done in the 1970s, in England, under industrial capitalism.
Disillusionment and disassociation, Willis argues, is a key facet of the school culture itself that
eases the transition from the school to the factory. In his ethnography about lower class Korean
youth, Choi discusses how the school culture is replicative of the values of post-industrial
capitalism and commercialization. Students at the school in which he did his ethnography,
students had already failed out of higher –achieving schools, and were sent to that one to try to
finish their degree. While the institution was sometimes successful in helping students to
graduate, he noted that graduation was only a priority when it enabled students to be able to get
jobs. Rather, students were interested in fashion, etc. the culture learned at the school enabled
students to get service industry jobs in a high-capital space (Choi, 280).
At White Plains High School, as the one high school in a globalized city with many
economies that support one another, students are both academically and culturally prepared to
enter professional industries, service industries, or criminalized informal economies. All of the

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interview subjects had been prepared for any, or multiple of these economies through their track
placements. The school tracks did more than engage students in different levels of academic
learning; they were also responsible for the culture students learned. Honors track students
tended to learn what Brandon described as a foreign “white culture”, in which they were
expecting to go to college. He also understood himself as a racialized outsider to this
culture. Different from Willis and Choi, the racialized elements of classed cultures also suggests
that students learned racialized cultures in conjunction with classed cultures. Regents track
students tended to learn a culture that was more disengaged with school and were often targeted
for discipline or security within the school.
While the tracks are not decisive and students did have agency within the institution
itself, they are a useful framework for which to analyze the ways in which White Plains High
School operated as multiple schools within a school. The following sections will first analyze
the institutional strategies for tracking students, by the statistical evidence and by the stories that
alumni tell about being tracked in the district, and will then analyze the cultures of
disengagement within the regents culture, the coveting of the majorly white, honors track, and
the role of security in creating a culture in which students become further disengaged or entered
into a racialized, criminalized class.
Discriminatory School Policies: The Data
In early 2013, the White Plains School District received a compliance review with the
Office for Civil Rights by the U.S. Department of Education to assess the possibility of school

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policies discriminating against Black, Hispanic, and English Language Learner students. This
compliance review is the first review in which statistical data about White, Black, and Latin@
students has been made available in order to better assess racialized tracking in the White Plains
School District (for the full review, see Appendix A). The data provided by this report will be
analyzed in this section, and later contrasted with interviewee’s oral history narratives about their
experiences being tracked in the district.
After conducting the compliance review, the Office of Civil Rights found that the White
Plains School District was in violation with Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and has
since entered an agreement with the district to continually assess the White Plains School
District’s improvement in making their honors and enrichment programs more accessible to
students of color.
Officially, the White Plains School District has no tracking program. Additionally, there
is no single “point of entry” for honors or AP courses, and there was no policy in order to test
everyone for the honors program. However, the report does note that enrollment in early
enrichment programs can have an effect on enrollment in honors courses later (Blanchard, 2).
There is no reported policy for acceptance into the Gifted and Talented Program (formerly
WINGS, discussed later in this paper) for elementary or middle school. For high school, the
district reports that teachers generally encourage high-achieving students to apply for the honors
program (Blanchard, 3). Of those that do apply, the district states that they evaluate each student
according to current grades (80%), state test exams (10%), and teacher recommendations (10%).
If students are not accepted into an honors program, they are given the opportunity to appeal the
decision (Blanchard, 4).

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In elementary, middle, and high school programs, the Office of Civil Rights found a
statistical significant underrepresentation of students of color in the school district.
For the elementary schools:
2011-2012 School Year
Student Enrollment
Grades 3-5
Student Enrollment
Small Group Enrichment Program
Total number of
students enrolled
% of student
body
Total number of
students enrolled
% of category in
program
Total 1567 397
Black 248 16% 32 8%
Hispanic 815 52% 102 26%
ELL 190 12% 0 0
Figure 1 (Blanchard, 5)
For the Middle School:
Student Enrollment
Grades 6-8
Student Enrollment
Advanced Courses
Total
number of
students
enrolled
% of student
body
Total number
of students
enrolled
% of category in
the program
Total 3702 1519
Black 267 18% 96 14%
Hispanic 745 49% 229 33%
ELL 162 11% 5 1%
For the High School:

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Student Enrollment
Grades 9 – 12
Student Enrollment
Honors and AP Courses
# % # %
Total 1963 395
Black 346 18% 37 9%
Hispanic 923 47% 122 31%
ELL 179 9% 10 3%
As figures 1, 2, and 3 have shown, the percentage of students of color enrolled in
enrichment or honors programs in the White Plains School District is about half of the
percentage of students enrolled in the school. Students in the English Language Learners level
tended to be least represented, with only 3% of the total enrollment in honors and AP courses in
the high school, 1% in the middle schools, and zero in the elementary schools. Following, Black
and Hispanic students tended to have about half of the percentage of students enrolled in
enrichment programs than that of the district. The statistics show that students of color were
statistically disadvantaged in accessing enrichment or honors programs. The data provided by
this report shows quantitative evidence that is supported by following qualitative evidence
expressed by alumni of the school district.
Tracking: Racializing the Future
The concept of tracking students goes far beyond just placing students into different class
levels based upon ability and achievement. Educational tracking is also crucial in dividing

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students into levels that will ultimately determine their opportunities in the economy. Tracking
is the school’s way of dividing students by race and class in order to produce specific outcomes.
While it is likely that decisions made about how to track students are not always intentional,
many of the interviews describe different experiences of white students being ‘placed’ and
students of color wanting to be on the honors track struggling to get a spot. Tracking defines
students within the schools and is one of the strongest contributors to subject formation within
the school system and the economy to which the students are (re)produced.
The school and school culture are largely responsible to “develop, transform, and
reproduce” students that enter (Willis, 2), through the education and culture they experience on
their track. This section analyzes the way Alumni remember the decisions made about their
tracks. In general, it became normalized for white students to be on an honors track and for
students of color to be on a Regents track. It followed that tracking systems reproduced
racialized class systems such that students leave the school district with different continuing
education or job opportunities.
The White Plains school district begins separating students when they start kindergarten.
Rather than sending children to the closest school to them, parents have the ability to elect where
they would like their children to go to elementary school. The Controlled Parents’ Choice
Program, according to the district, was initiated, “because of its (the school board’s) belief that
balance of the racial and ethnic diversity of the schools’ population would promote students’
understanding, appreciation, and acceptance of persons of different racial, ethnic, social, and
cultural backgrounds.” Parents are given the opportunity to rank their school preference and the
board ultimately chooses “based on parental choice, space available in each school, and the
Board’s racial and ethnic balance policy” (“Controlled Parents’ Choice Program”). While this

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policy is understood to be somewhat of an “equalizing” policy, some schools have been marked
as more rigorous than others. In addition, since the vast majority of students are placed in their
parents’ first choice school, it is unclear whether this program is accomplishing its goals.
Mel, a half-white, half-black interviewee talked with me about her experiences with
elementary school placement.
Mel: They put me in Post Road School2
, initially, because they thought I was white. They filled
out the thing or whatever. And they put me in Post Road to like, even it out. But then she
[Mel’s mother] sent my dad, who is very black, to the Board of Education to be like “She is not
going to Post Road” because they wanted me to go to George Washington.
School preference for parents is based upon a number of factors, including proximity to their
home, but is also based on the reputation of the school. Some schools have differing reputations
for educational rigor and the body of students. She was sent to one of the lower-achieving
schools with more people of color because, she believed, the district thought she was white and
wanted more white students at the school. By sending her father, she was able to prove that her
attending this school was not, in fact, an affirmative action move, and then she was able to attend
another school. In this case, Mel’s parents used her mixed-race identities to send her to what
they believed to be one of the more rigorous schools. Many parents were able to navigate the
system in order to choose the most optimal schools for their children.
While determining which elementary school she went to was an important moment in
Mel’s life, almost every interviewee was able to speak to the process of applying to and being
accepted or rejected from the enrichment program that began in 3rd
grade in the elementary
schools. The enrichment program, known as WINGS (now GATE--Gifted And Talented
2
Post Road School is White Plains School District’s most recently renovated school and is located closest to the
city’s poorer neighborhoods. There is a higher number of students of color at this school than at the other
elementary schools, and the school also anecdotally turns out the smallest number of students on the honors tract.

24
Enrichment), was a selective program for 3rd
through 5th
grade students that generally allowed
them to matriculate into the same program in middle school, and then was continued in the
honors program in the high school.
Interestingly enough, many of the interviewees remember their acceptance or rejection
from WINGS very differently. White interviewees, for the most part, could not speak much to
the process of tracking and instead talked about moving in the same group of people for a long
time. Alumni of color often could not remember or explain why they were not in WINGS—they
just remembered that they were not a part of it. Only one interviewee had to fight to be in the
program.
When asked about people who were on the honors track, Katie commented that “we had
been moving in the same group of smart people since elementary school”. Matt was able to
name a long list of white students with whom he had taken the same classes in third school.
Neither commented on the tests required to be a part of the enrichment program. For those who
did not have to struggle to be considered “honors”, there was little memory of the processes of
actually being a part of the program. However, Brandon told a completely different story:
Brandon: Like, I remember when I was in 2nd
grade and I came to White Plains School District
from Irvington and they were talking about putting kids in WINGS…and I remember talking
about WINGS a lot. And it’s simple things like this, WINGS, I remember I said, “WINGS?
Why not? Sure, it seems like I’m smart, be in WINGS. And they were like no, and I remember
these other kids got into WINGS. And I remember they took a WINGS placement exam, like
some type of exam to see how smart your kid was.
Pazia: Did you take it?
Brandon: No, but this other kid took it and failed. And I remember his mom wrote a letter like,
my kid needs to be there. Now, I got into WINGS at the end of that year, by 3rd
or 4th
grade.
And I remember that, over the summer, I wish I still had this letter, it could have been a law suit.
They sent me this letter, like, unfortunately, we don’t have enough space for you net year, you
won’t come back. But this kid, his mom wrote a letter, and even though he didn’t pass the test,
stayed in WINGS.

25
In this story, Brandon talks about how difficult it was to even be accepted into WINGS. He
remembers not being offered the test, just as Gabriel, a Latino transman, remembers not having
the opportunity to take the test either. However, Brandon’s example of being replaced by a
white student who did not have the test score to be in the enrichment program, but was able to
anyway, is reflective of the assumption and student of body: it is maintained to be largely white.
This student’s mother was able to contact the school and have her son put into the program
because she believed that, as a white boy, he belonged there. When the program was too full,
Brandon was one of the first to lose his spot. Because the program is a majority white students,
and many students of color have trouble accessing it, it is likely that resistance to allowing for
more fluid access to different tracks is due to the expectation of maintaining the white track in
order to create a cohort of high-achieving white students. As Brandon said, “It happens early”.
Gabriel had a different take on the honors program. Gabriel remembers feeling
uninvolved from school at an early age and not having any desire to be a part of the honors track.
Both he and Brandon recall not even being offered the test to be in the program. After
acknowledging that there were only white kids in WINGS, I asked him why he thought that was.
He told me:
Gabriel: I had a Hispanic friend in there that looked white. But he was white. When you’re
little though, you don’t think about color or why these things happen. That’s a damn good
question. Why the fuck is that though? Yo I remember where WINGS class was. There was a
black teacher, a female black teacher. With all white kids. I remember, crazy.
Gabriel’s only recollection of the WINGS program was that it was for white people. Not only
was he not offered the test, but he was able to remember one friend who passed for white in the
program. The exclusion of students of color, for him, seemed naturalized until he questioned it.

26
While the tracking happened early, it was a steady road maintained through middle and into high
school. Brandon described it this way:
Brandon: WINGS…signified you were really smart. If you were in that class, you definitely
were in all honors classes. Or advanced, they called that in middle school. If you were in an
advanced class, then you automatically get transplanted into honors. So, it’s a track. If you’re
on it at the start, you don’t have to do much to stay in it.
After the years spent on a track, interviewees remembered it being difficult to move from
one track to another. Students who were in certain classes had to take difficult tests to be placed
into the higher level, and not many students tried to move or were offered the test. For example,
Matt recalled a story about talking to a Latino classmate, José, about what it was like to try to
move down into a lower level course and contrasting it with José’s attempts to move into a
higher level course.
Matt: It was my senior year, and I didn’t want to take AP math anymore. I, like, had gotten tired
of it and didn’t want to do it anymore. I remember running into Jose and talking to him about
how he had been trying to take AP English after two years, even after doing well in the Regents
class, and they still didn’t let him do it. My advisor gave me such a hard time about dropping AP
Math and they just wouldn’t let him switch. It wasn’t fair.
The inertia became normalized for students on specific tracks. Students placed on an
honors track not only expected to stay on that track, but it was also expected of them. The dual
self- and institutional expectations contributed deeply to students’ understandings of who they
were and what they could expect of their futures. A large percentage of honors students can
expect to enroll in four year colleges, while the same expectations are not true for Regents level
students. This became a part of the culture and expectation of the track. Parents understood that
it was crucial to get their children on the honors track from the very beginning, in order to ensure
that their children could access professional class and class culture.

27
The inability to switch from one track to another was critical to the students’ racialization
and job opportunities when they left the district. Students began to internalize expectations of
who they were and what they could accomplish based upon the culture they were surrounded by
in the school. When talking to Gabriel about honors classes, he became very passionate about
why he did not take them.
Gabriel: Why do I have to take honors classes if I’m not going to college? Why are you forcing
me to go to college, first of all, from 9th
grade they started pushing me into that shit. And
then…why am I taking honors classes? What does it help me with in high school? Who is ever
going to ask me if I got a Regents diploma for any job? Mad people put them on mad résumés
and niggas not like, oh, you got a grade higher. No! Why am I doing extra in high school if it’s
not helping me get a basic job out of high school?
Here, Gabriel makes the point that an important part of the service class or criminalized culture
(he straddled both), is disengagement with the school as an institution. Willis calls this
“oppositional class culture” (Willis, 60), in which the culture of students not tracked to achieve
in school comes in conflict with the school. This disengagement forms the expectation to be a
part of the school institution or to be oppositional to it.
When I later asked Gabriel if he had ever wanted to go to college, he responded that
unless he was going to play basketball in college, he did not want to go. He had understood that,
especially on a Regents track, college was not nearly as much of an option and had wanted to get
a good job that he felt completely unprepared for leaving school. Gabriel understood that his
track was intended for him to get a service industry job. Choi (2005) argues that the increased
value of the service industry for students is a result of consumerism, which provides “an
ideological context where professional and academic careers are devalued” (Choi 274). It is
through the reinforcement that academics will not get Gabriel where he wants to go, Choi would
argue, that Gabriel would prefer the route of getting a service-industry job out of high school

28
rather than continuing with his education. Lopez sees the culture of valuing sports over
education as a function of the disengagement itself. Many students see the chance to “get out”
through sports to be more promising than academics (Lopez, 48).
Tracking in the school district allowed for the production of directions for individuals
within the institution. Not only were students tracked to do different types of labor, but these
productions were solidified from a young age as students were given very little ability to switch
tracks. Labor tracks to college or to jobs were racialized such that race not only was integral in
determining which track a student was on, but it also fundamentally limited access to switch
tracks, as the tracks have become a normalized aspect of the White Plains School District
culture. These tracks were important in creating a scope of what students could expect in their
future and solidifying students’ expectations in the school district. The condensation of
racialized and classed students onto specific learning tracks was crucial in forming racialized
laboring futures.
Failure
Throughout the conversations, many of the participants talked about their experiences of
failing in school or having the school district disengage with them. Almost all of the
interviewees of color talked about instances in which they felt alienated by the school district and
ended up having serious issues being able to catch up. Some felt like the school did not care
about them and did not engage them. While I did speak to white honors students, none of them
said that they felt like the school district did not make time for them or purposefully shut them
out. The “failure” within the school is framed under the production of oppositional

29
consciousness for Black and Latin@ students. Students who failed had experiences of being
pushed down or through—either ‘down’ out of the track, or ‘through’ to graduate.
The ‘push out’ of the school came to inform an important part of oppositional
consciousness within the school. The school provided moments for students in which they
became more attuned to their track. The structures of the tracking played out as individual
experiences for students, solidifying for them what it meant to be a student in that school. This
section will move chronologically, first analyzing memories of elementary and middle school,
and then looking at the ways in which students get disengaged in high school.
Understanding, as Brandon said, that tracking “starts young”, many of the stories begin in
elementary school with a story he told about his friend, Cameron.
Brandon: I mean, I remember, like, occasionally we’ll get together, a couple of us guys, black
guys, and there’s one friend I had named Cameron. And me and Cameron were talking and he
was like, “Yo, I remember I was in 3rd
grade, and every time I read, every time I got lost reading
I would say ‘it says’.” Just a little quirk, you know what I mean? You’re reading something and
you’re like, “Jimmy went to the store,” you lose your line, and you’re like, “It says Jimmy went
to the store,” you know, he just did that. And the teacher one day snapped and was like, “Why
do you always say ‘it says’? That’s dumb! Just keep reading! And he was like, “Then I
remember, she broke my confidence to learn how to read. I just…suffered. And because I
suffered, I didn’t get the reading skills that I should have and therefore I suffered in high school.
And I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault but mine. But what people do to you really plays a
factor.”
Cameron’s story of disengagement begins young. It provides one example of a black student
who was scolded while learning, internalized it, and struggled because of it. The experience in
of the school failing him helped define his position in the school as a Regents student, expected
for the service industry, but also opened up the possibility for an aversion to school in which
oppositional consciousness to the school emerged. While these stories and experiences are
cumulative, Brandon was able to show us a moment in which Cameron was able to trace back an
initial realization that school was not able to support him to this one moment. While it is

30
possible that most students have stories like this, Cameron’s story was unique because it has left
a strong mark on who he was and what he felt like he could accomplish in the future.
Brandon was able to tell a similar, yet markedly different story in which he felt attacked
by White Plains School District teachers:
Brandon: I got a 27% on a math test, and he [the math teacher] came up to me, put his finger on
my desk, looked me in the eye, and said, “You will never be a man.”
Pazia: Are you serious?
Brandon: Serious. Now, remember, and these are the things that you go through. What if I was,
let’s see, Ryan [white student] in his advanced math class and I got a 30, it would have been,
“Get your mom to sign this. Let’s get extra help. We’re going to see you through the process.”
But for me, it’s like, “You need to be a man, you’re not going to be a man.”
Rather than being told he was “dumb” like in the last story, here Brandon has his masculinity
challenged. While there is not challenge to his intellectual capacity to the class, the challenge is
that he will never grow up to be the “man” he is supposed to be. The challenge to Brandon’s
development into a ‘respectable’ masculinity solidified his racialization in the institution. The
teacher, serving as a representative of the school, expected very little of him. He was not
expected to be a successful student because he was growing into a black man who would fail and
could become a “criminal” (Alexander, 63). The expectation was that Brandon would become
failed or criminalized. Although he recalls moments in which he felt disillusioned in high
school, he also talks about the pride he felt in being able to stick it out and “make it”. This attack
was a message of being pushed out from the honors track as a student of color. In many ways, it
is a message of exclusion, not only from the district, but from the community as well.
While others did not speak as much to individual attacks that made it difficult for them to
continue in the district, they were able to talk about ways in which they felt pushed through the
school district while the teachers pushed them through. In a comparison between White Plains

31
High School and a private school Andres had attended, he commented that, “[In my private
school] they want to keep you engaged. Like, they want to teach you. They love talking about
that shit. You go to White Plains…they’re just there. Going through the motions. Here’s the
homework. You don’t pass. Oh well. You fail. I don’t care.” In another point in the interview,
Gabriel commented, “It was easy to fall out.” Andres attributed this to “a lot of distractions”.
However, Andres also commented that the honors class he took was “definitely more dedicated
to helping us”. While they both challenged that not every teacher was like this, and they were
careful to name teachers that had been very informative and inspirational to them, both of them
agreed that their teachers had, for the most part, been disengaged from the work they were doing.
As Andres and Gabriel commented that they thought a lot of teachers didn’t care, they
also noted that many of the teachers did everything they could to make them pass so that they
could graduate. Gabriel told a story about passing through his Spanish class:
Gabriel: They was like, extra credit. Extra credit. Everything extra credit. I was like…I did all
that extra credit and I had an A in the class.
Andres: Teachers…they give you some easy ass shit.
Gabriel: I did all the extra credit and I got an A in the class.
Pazia: What class was this?
Gabriel: Spanish! I kid you not…I was good at Spanish. I did no homework. All I did was the
speaking part. No one in my class could do the oral. I was like, alright, so, I’m the only student
who doesn’t want to do the writing, everyone’s good at the writing, I was like, fuck it. So I did
nothing. She would be like, you need to do your work. I was like, alright. But I didn’t care, and
then she was like, time for the oral, and she called my name, we go outside and do the oral. And
I get a hundred, and then I’d bullshit and I’d get a C or something. If I had paid attention, I
would have done well. But I was like, I know I’m going to pass all the extra credit and get over
an A+. And I didn’t do shit. You feelin’ me? Like, yes, I could have learned more, but at the
same time, I did nothing and I still got an A+. Extra credit. Bullshit.
On the same note, Linda, a current Spanish teacher at the high school, commented that “[lower
level] Spanish has always been a dumping ground for students who don’t fit in any other class.”

32
While Gabriel’s story is not an anomaly and may reveal distinct tracking trends within the
Language Other Than English department generally, his stories about being pushed to pass are
not unfamiliar. Both Gabriel and Andres spoke to being pushed through and to having their
curriculum watered down and being given extra credit in order to be pushed on to the next level,
while not having to do the work the class requires. Being “pushed” through to graduate was
another important element to the Regents track. Often, students were not pushed to learn; rather,
the teachers did not want their class to be an impediment to the students’ graduation. The “push
through” is essential to supporting oppositional culture within the school. In her ethnography
about an underserved urban high school, Lopez noted,
In response to the dumbed-down classes they were subjected to, men described earning
average grades because they were simply bored with the classes being offered. Men
talked about not studying as hard as they should and cutting class, boasting that they were
often “chilling” and “hanging out with the fellas” (Lopez, 44).
Being pushed through and given easy work made it easier to be disengaged from and adverse to
school.
In all cases, these Black and Latin@ students were pushed through to Regents tracks due
to results of an incidence of low performance in honors or were pushed to graduate on the
Regents track as a bottom level. Brandon commented that he would have never been able to stay
in honors classes if he had not done all of the work. Stories of passing students to maintain the
track were important to continuing the function of the racially homogenous tracking. Stories
about belonging and not belonging on specific tracks were critical in determining who can fail
and be forced off of the track and who cannot. As Brandon commented, a white student in an
honors class can fail and continue, but he had to struggle to make his place on that track.
Similarly, students on a Regents track did not have to struggle to maintain the track and pass.

33
While there are students that are unable to complete their tracks, as Gabriel commented, the
school made it easy to continue to pass no matter what you did. Oppositional consciousness was
created for students who were ‘pushed through’ or ‘pushed out’—setting up a culture against the
school that prepared students for service industry or criminalized jobs.
All of these stories converge as individual interactions with the racialized class-track
hierarchy in the school. We can understand the link between the hierarchical structures and
individual stories in a similar vein as Omi and Winant’s conception of racial formation as a
process of structure and representation (Omi and Winant, 69). Their concept of racial formation
posits that racialization works as a connection between discursive practices and socially
structures. Meanings and actions are imbibed within the structure of the organization itself. As
the White Plains School District creates a racial hierarchy in its tracking system, individual
racialized experiences emerge as the individual interactions with the system itself. Therefore, as
it has appears from the interviews, white students and students of color not only had vastly
different experiences of being tracked, but they also had vastly different experiences with the
staff and had different individual interactions with the system. These interactions are just as
much a part of the institution itself. While white students could not generally seem to define
individual moments when the system failed them, students of color were able to offer many sites
to explore instances when they felt disengaged, put down, or pushed out.
Protecting Whiteness
In the processes of racial formation in the school setting, interviewees described
whiteness as an emerging identity that needed its assets protected. When asked about tracking,

34
many students had remembered progressing through school in a specific group of classmates, but
had not frequently asked why there was very little movement of students between levels. What
emerged was a system in which a couple of interviewees had their privileges questioned, and
these memories stuck with them. The majority-white honors track became coveted and needed
protection, as inclusion within it was crucial for being accepted into a competitive college and
(re)produced into a professional class. This section analyzes anecdotes of interviewees’
remembering protection over this track.
While talking to Matt, a middle class white man who is now in college, I ended up asking
him about his most prominent memories of good or bad teachers. Immediately, he began talking
about a history teacher he had in an 11th
grade honors course.
Matt: Well, I remember class with Mr. Allen, and, like, he asked everyone to raise their hands in
the room if they were not white or if their family didn’t own a house. And I don’t even
remember anybody raising their hand but it was just…so…upsetting.
Pazia: Why was it upsetting?
Matt: I mean, I think it made it so people who were not either of those things should not have
been there, and it also made people who were those things feel like they didn’t deserve to be
there.
In this short interaction with Matt, he was able to articulate the discomfort that had sat
with him for years about having his right to be in the class, because he had been white and his
family owned a house. The questioning of his position within the institution and the ways in
which race and class had worked to determine his position on the honors track became a point of
protection, denial, and anger at the teacher who had said it.
Similarly, Brandon was able to speak to the way in which he felt excluded from what had
been tracked as white, and the animosity he received when joining those mostly white activities.

35
When he was in orchestra towards the end of high school, he was given the opportunity to join
honors ensemble.
Brandon: Mr. Murray comes up to me and he’s like, Brandon, I just want to let you know that
you are in honors ensemble right now. Like, as if I was supposed to be like, YES! And I
remember I went up to him and I was like, what does that mean? And he was like, you’ll have to
wait after school and go on our little tours and things like that. And I was like, ah, I don’t want
to go. And he’s like, it’s an honor. You should treat it as such. And I was like, sure. That night
was their first practice. Ryan picks me up, and we get to honors ensemble and I’ll never forget,
Shelley turns to me and she goes, “Why are you here?” and I go, “What do you mean?” and she
goes, “Why are you here? This is honors ensemble.” And I go, “Yeah, Mr…” and Ryan cuts in
and he goes, “Brandon made it to honors ensemble. So and so left.” And she’s like, “Oh oh ok
ok ok sure sure.” And I’m like, damn, you treat it like it’s that important to you, like it’s a club?
You know? Is this some type of fraternity or something? That day I knew, like, people really
hold on to what’s theirs.
Because of the small movements on and off of the track that were possible, students on
the track became wary of losing their edge on the honors track. The precarious structure of
exclusion, both in the honors history class and in honors ensemble, were both brought into
question by the teacher and by the presence of a black man that skewed the concept of who
should be in those spaces. Matt and Shelley’s reactions showed how defense of the exclusivity
of the spaces was critical to maintaining their power. By protecting honors history and honors
ensemble for white and/or affluent students, the students in those spaces were able to reiterate
their positions and access within the institution. In conclusion, the institution created their power
through its routes of access and protections to racialized classes, clubs, and activities.
Security, Punishment, and the Criminalized Culture
At White Plains High School, security was applied disproportionally to its students. The
school is staffed with many security guards at the entrances. The security guards both control
who comes in and who leaves, and are also present to help move students to class, patrol the

36
halls, and intervene in student affairs. For some students, security was friendly, would let them
come and go whenever they pleased, and were advocates for keeping them out of trouble. Some
students did not have any interactions with security. Some, however, had many interactions with
security, were constantly in and out of detention, or had suspensions. Interviewees reported that
security and punishment were disproportionally applied to Black and Latin@ students. The
security resulted in a process of criminalization within the school. Some students were more
likely to be punished, resulting in more detentions or suspensions, los of class time, and further
disassociation from the school district.
Many students of color remembered the difference in how students white students were
treated in comparison to themselves by security guards:
Andres: Ok so there’s the black security guards. Ok, so most of them are black. There would be
a white kid in the hallway. I’d be talking to the guy, and there would be a white boy walking by,
and he would tell me, go to class.
Gabriel: Same to me.
Andres. And he would be like, word? I’m joking go to class.
Gabriel: Yeah and he would be like where’s your pass at. And I would be like I don’t have one,
and he would be like, get out of here. Into shit all the time.
Both Gabriel and Andres, self-described Hispanic men, remember being stopped and asked to
show their hall passes while white students were allowed to just walk by. Similarly, when white
alumni were interviewed, they did not even recall interactions with security. Gabriel and Andres
remember the security stops functioning similar to stop and frisk in New York City. Under stop
and frisk in New York City, in which people of color are stopped at disproportionally higher
numbers than white people. In New York City in 2012, 55% of those stopped were black, 32%
were Latin@, and 10% were white (New York Civil Liberties Union). Gabriel and Andres have

37
frequent memories of white students not being questioned for if they were going to class, similar
to methods of stop and frisks. Michelle Alexander argues that stops and searches are used in the
war against drugs to increase the criminalization of black and brown people (Alexander, 63). In
the school environment, this works a little differently. While students are not searched for drugs
or weapons, the frequent stops of black and brown students is indicative of increased
surveillance, and thus punishment, for these students.
Similarly, both Gabriel and Andres remembered being in detention or suspended in high
school. The high school ran in-school and after-school detention, although the student handbook
does not identify which types of violations constitute an in-school or after-school detention. In-
school detention ran every period. Both Gabriel and Andres commented that they had no
recollection of seeing any white students, except the white potheads, in in-school detention.
Andres also commented, “The best way to skip class…get detention”. Here, detention functions
as a punishment that further removes disillusioned students from school.
Generally, the school-to-prison pipeline is understood as a set of policies that funnels
students straight from school to the criminal justice system. These policies are mainly zero-
tolerance, such that a student can be punished for their actions in school within the criminal
justice system, or they are abruptly removed from schools. Both of these systems are racialized
systems of disengagement, such that students who are targeted under these policies are generally
poor or students of color.
In White Plains High School, the process of disengagement is decidedly different than the
typical zero-tolerance policies. In this section I will discuss the methods of punishment and

38
disengagement that provide avenues for students with criminalized behavior to enter the criminal
justice system.
Zero-tolerance policies are punishment policies in which the harsher the student is
perceived to violate the policies, the worse the punishment is for the action. Zero tolerance
policies allow for schools to use discretion in determining what types of violations count as
serious enough to remove students from school for long periods of time. For example, some
schools are required to remove students from school for a year for bringing a weapon onto school
grounds (Dunbar and Virrauel, 84). Many of these zero-tolerance policies result in having
students further disengaged and removed from school. Studies have shown that “removing the
problem” rather than focusing on ways to make students accountable alienates students from
school and makes it much more likely that they will not finish their degrees (Dunbar and
Virrauel, 85). White Plains High School does not have zero tolerance policies.
Two of the interviewees, Gabriel and Mike, had both been suspended from White Plains
High School. However, they both had very different paths of engagement with school. Gabriel
explained that when he was suspended for marijuana use, he felt completely “fucked over” by an
administrator that he had trusted because his suspension resulted in violence at home. He
returned to school black and blue after being suspended and had come to the administrator
saying that he was starving, and was later granted free lunch for the rest of his time there. He
also believed that the suspension had been taken off of his record. While many other steps were
taken at that time to protect him—he was soon moved into a group home and had a lot of help
negotiating a way in which he could return to his parents’ home, the results of disengaging in
school were very severe. While he was in and out of meetings with social workers, he was
kicked off of the basketball team for not making it to enough practices. He still dreams of being

39
able to play basketball and hopes to go back to the gym and continue playing, although he
realizes that he is quickly getting too old to be able to go back and play in a college or
professional setting. These experiences with punishment contributed to an aversion to academics
and the school environment. It also contributed to drug cultures that were oppositional to school
that were later funneled into criminalized economies.
Mike had entirely different experiences with punishment. After being suspended from
White Plains High School, he was removed to the alternative community school, where he
continued to have problems with attendance and violations in school. While he did not share his
actions that resulted in his disciplinary file, he did comment that his mother was able to file a
claim with the school board and the school paid for him to attend a private preparatory school for
a year to see if it was more suitable for him.
Similarly, a school district parent, Linda, was able to win a case with the school board for
her daughter who was having emotional needs that expanded beyond the realm of what the
school district could offer. She won her case and was able to send her daughter to a residential
program, paid by the school district, in Long Island.
Alumni of color with whom I talked to often had discipline or emotional issues.
However, none of them recalled either them or their friends being removed from the school
district for an opportunity in which the school district paid for them to go. While two
interviewees is certainly not a trend, it does raise suspicion as to which students will be funded to
leave the district because the district is unable to satisfy their needs.
In fact, it is not just these two white students who did not have their needs met by the
school district. The graduation rate of White Plains High School has been steadily around 80%

40
(“White Plains Senior High School”), indicating that about 20% of students are not having their
needs met by the district in order to graduate in four years. While there are clearly many other
factors in determining when students can graduate (these can range from language barriers,
disabilities, or students who need to work to support their families), it is clear that a good
percentage of students are not being served in order to meet graduation requirements. It is
unclear, however, the gravity of the situations that allow students to be able to leave the district
and which do not. While there is no available data about the number of students moved in
between programs within the district, it is interesting to note that the alternative programs had
only been offered to the white students or families interviewed, while many others struggled to
stay in or engaged in school.
While the processes of engagement and disengagement are different for each student, and
largely determined by race, gender, and class, some students find themselves in vulnerable
positions for entry to the prison system. I engaged in with Andres and Gabriel in an illuminating
conversation about life after high school:
Pazia: How do you think you’ve changed since high school? Your perspective and the things
that you want?
Andres: Wow, that’s a huge question. To be honest, like a year and a half ago, when I graduated
high school, I was set on the idea of living the rest of my life being a drug dealer. That’s what I
aspired to do.
Pazia: Why do you think that is?
Andres: I don’t know, that’s why I was like I changed. I changed so much.
Gabriel: I thought I was a thug. I was like, nigga, you are not a thug. You will get sliced in two
seconds. I thought I was the shit. I’m nobody.
Andres: You get this realization and you’re like, this is stupid. This is all stupid.
Pazia: How did you realize it? Was there like, a moment?
Andres: I just kept fucking up and I hit a point where I was like, damn, I don’t like this feeling.

41
Gabriel: And you’re not good at it. You’re realizing yourself you’re not good at it. What are
you doing?
By the end of high school, both Gabriel and Andres had become drug dealers, realizing that they
could get caught at any time. Both have since stopped dealing because they realized it was
dangerous and were unsatisfied with the options it was giving them. However, their experiences
in school had supported them becoming drug dealers. As they became increasingly disillusioned
with the school system and became further involved in the drug economy, they chose to continue
with it for a short time after they graduated.
Dealing drugs is highly criminalized carefully policed; therefore it is a dangerous
economy. The War on Drugs, originating in the Reagan Era, has been responsible for the vast
increase of incarcerated people and parolees. Drug offenses alone account for two thirds of the
rise in the federal incarcerated population and more than half of the rise in all incarcerated people
between 1985 and 2000. This number—equal to half a million people in prison or jail for drug
offenses, is 1,000 percent more than it was in 1980, when the number of people incarcerated for
drug crimes was 41,000 (Alexander, 60). The likelihood is that if either Andres or Gabriel had
continued selling drugs, they might have been implicated by the criminal justice system.
Other interviewees remembered friends from high school who had been locked up or had
died in drug deals. Sarah and Mel talked about a friend that had been shot in a drug deal in
White Plains. Brandon talked about many of his friends who had been arrested or were serving
time. Additionally, he went on to describe the people who had gotten caught up in the criminal
justice system:
Brandon: They’re like, people that, when I was in high school, I played on the basketball team
with, people from the area, I mean, a lot of people from the projects3
area, people who…they
3
The “Projects” are the White Plains Housing Projects, consisting of about seven buildings in White Plains

42
weren’t like, big time criminals. They just...whether they beat up their girlfriend or you got
caught selling a dime bag, I mean, the options are endless here, you know? People are just
getting into trouble. I mean, when we were in high school, there was one guy on the basketball
team with me who got stabbed. He had to go to the hospital, he got implicated, went to jail. One
of the friends I grew up with, you know, got arrested for whatever reason. Things happen, you
know?
Andres and Gabriel also remembered there being a lot of people arrested or in jail. Andres
commented that he especially knew about a lot of dealers that were in prison. The vast majority
of people mentioned were lower class black or Latino men, all of which had attended the same
high school.
While students from White Plains High School were not necessarily funneled straight
from high school to prison, some became subjects that were likely to become people who could
be in prison—they were more likely to go to detention, more likely to be disengaged from
school, less likely to be given options outside of the school district, and more likely to be
involved in selling drugs. This production was an integral part of oppositional consciousness in
which students were produced in service and criminalized economies.
White Plains High School in the Neoliberal Economy
The past sections have outlined the geography of White Plains and have explored the
contexts of tracking and replicating racialized class structures within White Plains High School.
I have argued that an oppositional consciousness appears on the Regents track in reaction to
exclusion or failure within the school system, creating an avenue in which service industry or
criminalized work occurs. In contrast, students tracked into honors work to protect it, stay
engaged in the school, and are prepared to move on to college. Class (re)productions are
racialized. The result is a racialized system of class that is created in the school district.

43
In conclusion, I attempt to bring together the politics of education today and link it with
neoliberal economic and social politics that have proliferated since the 1970s. I posit that the
school is a functioning feature of the neoliberal project in which economic inequality is
recreated. Neoliberal policies normalize the classes produced in school systems and exacerbate
inequalities within the created class structure.
Neoliberalism can be understood as economic and social shifts in the economy since the
1970s until today. Lisa Duggan argues that neoliberalism developed as a model of
disassembling welfare and raising corporate profits, such that there was a large shift of money to
the very rich. Changes in political culture and economic policy have supported heightened
corporate profit and the diversion of money from social issues (Duggan, xi). Duggan describes
five integral changes in that have framed neoliberalism in the United States:
 Attacks on the New Deal, the Great Society, and unionism, such that
redistributive welfare has been devalued
 Attacks on social movements, such as civil rights, black power, feminist and gay
liberation movements
 Pro-business activism that has allowed for the convergence of businesses and
redistribution of resources upwards
 “Culture Wars” of the 1980s and 1990s that have resulted in ‘conservative’
alliances between religious moralists and racial nationalists
 The emergence of “multicultural” and “equality politics” that are not
redistributive and corporatized (Duggan, xii)
This understanding of neoliberalism, as an overall shift towards corporate wealth and
even more economic inequality, has had a vast impact on education and education policy.
Neoliberalism in education is typically framed as a conversation about the privatization and
corporatization of education, resulting in stratified educational opportunities. Rather, I choose
discuss the neoliberalization of education in the context of White Plains as a way of
understanding the false equalization and economic opportunities that result from education. I

44
refute the idea that more education and more educational opportunities expand economic
equality. Rather, the school works as a mechanism that helps to racialize and stratify students
along the same lines in order to reproduce the economy of landscape of the school itself, while
access to switching tracks is incredibly difficult. Therefore, the school is a neoliberal mechanism
of the reproduction of inequality.
The school has historically been, and continues to be, each individual’s opportunity to
“pull yourself up from your bootstraps”. Because of the embedded belief that education will
save you from poverty, education policy has been taken up as economic policy and social justice.
In 1989, George H. W. Bush stated, “Educational achievement promotes sustained economic
growth, enhances the nation’s competitive position in world markets, increases productivity, and
leads to higher incomes for everyone” (Ohmann, 64). Even more recently, in a speech on the
state of the economy to a joint session of Congress, Barack Obama stated, “in a global economy
where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just
a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite.” (Marsh, Kindle Locations 116-118) The
assumption behind this statement is that a good education will allow for a worker to get a high-
paying job, and high-paying jobs will boost the economy and alleviate poverty.
While there has been a reduction in the money spent on welfare and benefits for poor
people, there has been a steady increase in state and corporate interest in schools. Schools have
become the main location for intervention in peoples’ lives. Big non-profits like Teach for
America and The New Teacher Project have made it their mission to lower the achievement gap,
and thus attempt to end poverty for poor students. Even Bill Gates has jumped on the
bandwagon, both with his Millennial Scholarship Program and with his own designing and
funding of the Common Core to increase student achievement and data across the country.

45
Corporations have begun to fund charter schools, which function as business models, to deliver
data and thus increase their funding. Lowering the achievement gap in schools has become the
discursive and policy solution to poverty in the next generation, providing an opportunity for
students to “make it”.
Because education is understood as the ultimate equalizer, the invisible hand is trusted to
decide who succeeds in the market and the “American Dream” and who does not. The ideology
exists now that if you did not do well in your educational setting, it is your fault. Everyone is
provided with a K-12 education, and while everyone does not have access to the same
educational resources, it is understood that if you do well enough, you can “get out” of poverty.
For some people, this can be a reality. John Marsh, author of Class Dismissed, argues: “Some
people may escape poverty and low incomes through education, but a problem arises when
education becomes the only escape route from these conditions—because that road will very
quickly become bottlenecked. (Marsh, Kindle Locations 223-224). Even though education can
help a select few people “get out”, it is not a viable solution for the majority of people. Those
who “succeed” do so because they are assumed to be smarter, better, and more disciplined. For
people who are not able to achieve in academic settings, it is considered to be their fault, and
they are stuck living in poverty. Social Darwinism and free market values, or the concept that
the school is everyone’s equal chance to succeed, naturalizes class structures, achievement gaps,
and racialized socioeconomic (re)production.
The main results of neoliberalism have been the failure of economic justice and the
increasing of gaps between the rich and the poor. Because school is understood as the great
“equalizer”, and is the site where people gain qualifications for jobs, schools play an integral role
in the neoliberal world. As this paper has shown thus far, schools may not be places in which

46
equality and empowerment occur. At White Plains High School, the school has been shown as
an institution that reifies and (re)produces specific workers: people who have the potential to be
professionals (generally white people), people who may get service-industry jobs, and people
who can be criminalized and removed from the economy entirely (generally Black or Latin@
people). The school as the great opportunity structure is a farce: rather than providing
opportunities for students to mediate socioeconomic class, students more likely relearn their
socioeconomic class within the school. This happens through racialized and classed tracking,
where students are placed in educational directions for specific classes, and through interpersonal
interactions with faculty, staff, other students, and security, in which students culturally learn
their class. The school is a part of a whole neoliberal system responsible for reproducing
racialized gaps between the rich and poor.
Investments in education instead of in welfare have allowed for the government to not
deal with economic redistribution or actually working to alleviate poverty directly. Rather, the
indirect method of education reform has become an opportunity to invest in education and
opportunities of raising oneself up from poverty. This project allows for a select few people to
“make it”, while it continues to increase the gap between the rich and the poor. The cause of
poverty then becomes the fault of the individual, who was “not smart enough” to excel, rather
than class inequality and the existence of poverty.
The results of racialized class (re)production, in tandem with neoliberal policy, solidify a
perpetual poor class of people with limited access to government benefits and little agency in
being able to change it. School is rarely able to “equalize” or mediate a process of “getting out”.
In the city of White Plains, the school (re)produces the classes of students who will then become

47
a part of the geopolitical landscape of professional class, forms of service labor, and even non-
laborers or criminalized laborers.
Moving forward, it is critical that the White Plains School District analyzes the impact of
their hierarchical tracking policies and makes necessary changes in order to minimize the
negative impacts upon Black and Latin@ students in the school district. These policies have
shown to be legally discriminatory and have devastating impacts upon Black and Latin@
students in the schools. With changes in the structure and culture of the school, students could
have more agency and possibilities for their lives.

48
Works Cited
"About the City." Downtown White Plains. Downtown White Plains, n.d. Web. 19 Dec 2013.
<http://www.downtownwhiteplains.com/sites/dtwp/city.aspx>
“About Our Schools.” White Plains Public Schools. White Plains School District. 2013. Web.
19 Dec 2013. <http://www.whiteplainspublicschools.org/site/Default.aspx?PageID=5>
"Controlled Parents’ Choice Program." White Plains Public Schools. White Plains School
District, 2-13. Web. 19 Dec 2013.
<http://www.whiteplainspublicschools.org/site/Default.aspx?PageID=726 >.
"White Plains Senior High School." Find Schools in Your Area. Long Island Newsday, 2013.
Web. 19 Dec 2013. <http://schools.newsday.com/new-york/districts/white-plains/white-plains-
senior-high-school/>.
Alexander, Michelle. The new jim crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. (2nd
ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. 2012.
Blanchard, Timothy C.J.. "Compliance Resolution: White Plains School District." U.S.
Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. United States Department of Education, 18 04
2013. Web. 19 Dec 2013.
<http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/investigations/02115001-a.html>.
Choi, Jung-ah. "New Generation's Career Aspirations and New Ways of Marginalization in a
Postindustrial Economy." British Journal of Sociology of Education. 26.2 (2005): 269-283.
Danielson, Michael N, and Jameson W Doig. New York: The Politics of Urban Regional
Development. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982.
Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on
Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.
Dunbar, Christopher, and Francisco Virrauel. "Urban School Leaders and the Implementation of
Zero-Tolerance Policies: An Examination of Its Implications." Peabody Journal of Education.
77.1 (2002): 82-401. Print.
Eddings, Keith. "Discount shops fall to gentrification." Journal News [White Plains] 03 08 2008,
A1.
Jones-Correa, Michael. "Reshaping the American dream : immigrants, ethnic minorities, and the
politics of the new suburbs." Trans. Array The New Suburban History. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2006.

49
Lopez, Nancy. Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education.
New York: Taylor and Francis Books, Inc., 2003.
Marsh, John. Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality.
NYU Press. Kindle Edition. 2011.
Meadow, Tey. "Studying Each Other: On Agency, Constraint, and Positionality in the Field."
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. XX.X (2013).
New York Civil Liberties Union. "Stop-and-Frisk Data."Racial Justice in New York. New York
Civil Liberties Union, 2013. Web. 20 Dec 2013. <http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-
data>.
National School Climate Center. "FAQ's About School Climate." National School Climate
Center. 2013. Web. 19 Dec 2013. <http://schoolclimate.org/climate/faq.php>.
Ohmann, Richard. "Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of
Inequality Book Review." Radical Teacher. 94 (2013).
Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard. Racial Formation in the United States. New York:
Routledge Books. 1986.
Santos, Fernanda. "Urban Success Story, With Hint of Unease for Poorer Residents." Journal
News [White Plains] 3 01 2008.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/nyregion/03journal.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0>.
Sassen, Saskia. "A New Geography of Centers and Margins: Summary of Implications." Trans.
Array The City Reader. 5th. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Sassen, Saskia. "The Global City: introducing a Concept." Brown Journal of World Affairs. 9.2
(Winter/Spring 2009).
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Fact Finder. 2013. [Web]. 19 Dec 2013.
<http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml>
Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977.

50
Appendix A: Letter of Resolution from the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of
Education to the White Plains School District
April 18, 2013
Dr. Christopher P. Clouet
Superintendent of Schools
White Plains Public School District
5 Homeside Lane
White Plains, New York 10605
Re: Case No. 02-11-5001
White Plains Public School District
Dear Superintendent Clouet:
This is to advise you of the resolution of the above-referenced compliance review that was initiated
by the U.S. Department of Education (Department), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on February
14, 2011. The compliance review assessed whether the White Plains Public School District (the
District) discriminated against Black, Hispanic, and English Language Learner (ELL) students by
establishing and implementing policies and procedures that resulted in their exclusion from college
and career ready programs and courses, such as the District’s Honors and Advanced Placement
(AP) courses.
OCR initiated this compliance review under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), as
amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., and its implementing regulation at 34 C.F.R. Part 100, which
prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs and activities
receiving financial assistance from the Department. The District is a recipient of financial
assistance from the Department. Therefore, OCR has jurisdictional authority to conduct this
review under Title VI.
Prior to the conclusion of OCR’s investigation, the District expressed an interest in voluntarily
resolving this case and entered into a resolution agreement, which commits the District to specific

51
actions to address the issue under review. This letter summarizes the applicable legal standards,
the information gathered during the review and how the review was resolved.
The applicable standards for determining compliance are set forth in the regulation implementing
Title VI, at 34 C.F.R. §100.3(a), (b) (1) and (2). Section 100.3(a) provides that no person shall,
on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the
benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any program operated by a recipient.
Section 100.3(b)(1) prohibits a recipient, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, from
denying an individual a service or benefit of a program; providing different services or benefits;
subjecting an individual to segregation in any matter related to the receipt of a service or benefit;
restricting an individual in any way in receiving a service or benefit; treating an individual
differently in determining whether s/he satisfies any admission or eligibility requirement for
provision of a service or benefit; and, denying an individual an opportunity to participate in a
program or affording her/him an opportunity to do so which is different from that afforded to
others. Section 100.3(b)(2) prohibits a recipient from utilizing criteria or methods of
administration that have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race,
color, or national origin.
The administration of student enrollment in courses can result in unlawful discrimination based on
race in two ways: first, if students are subject to different treatment based on their race, and second,
if a policy is neutral on its face and administered neutrally but has a disproportionate and
unjustified effect on students of a particular race.
Overview of the District
The District is located in White Plains, New York, and is composed of five elementary schools
(Kindergarten through Grade 5), two middle schools (Grades 6 through 8) and two high schools
(Grades 9 through 12).
During each of the past two school years (2010-2011 and 2011-2012), the District had an
enrollment of over 7000 students, with over 1960 at the high schools. For these two school years,
Black students made up 17% (1195 students) and 16% (1111 students) of the total student
enrollment, and Hispanic students made up approximately half of the total student enrollment
(3530 students, 49%; 3605 students; 51%). During school year 2010-2011, approximately 945
students, or 13% of the District’s population, were ELL students. During school year 2011-2012,
approximately 1059 students, or 15% of the District’s population, were ELL students. Of those
ELL students, at least 88% had a primary home language of Spanish.

52
Summary of Review
During the investigation, OCR collected information from the District for the 2010-2011 and 2011-
2012 school years. OCR reviewed information that the District provided regarding its high school
honors and AP programs. OCR also reviewed District information concerning its Gifted and
Talented Education (GATE) program at the elementary and middle school levels and its advanced
courses at the middle school level. OCR noted that enrollment in these programs and courses
could potentially have an effect on later enrollment in high school Honors and AP courses.
OCR analyzed student enrollment data for the District and for each school in the District, and
compared it to enrollment data for each specific GATE, advanced, honors, and AP program. In
addition, OCR interviewed District personnel, including the Assistant Superintendent for
Curriculum and Instruction (the Assistant Superintendent). OCR also initiated a file review of a
sample of approximately 350 students.
High School Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) Courses
OCR determined that for school year 2011-2012, the District offered 18 Honors and 18 AP courses
in Grades 9 through 12 at White Plains High School. Students attending White Plains Community
High School at Rochambeau could also enroll in these courses at White Plains High School. The
offered courses included: English (Honors 1, 2 and AP 3, 4); Global History (Honors); World
History (AP); U.S. History (AP); Comparative Government and Politics (AP); Psychology (AP);
Economics (Honors); Geometry (Honors); Algebra 2/Trigonometry (Honors); Pre-Calculus
(Honors); Calculus (AP-AB and AP-BC); Statistics (AP); Living Environment (Honors); Earth
Science (Honors); Chemistry (Honors and AP); Physics (Honors and AP-C); Biology (AP);
Environmental Science (AP); Spanish (Honors and AP); Spanish – Native Language (Honors 4
and AP); French (Honors and AP); German (Honors 4, 5); Italian (Honors and AP); and Latin
(Honors and AP).
According to data from the District, the Honors and AP courses in the District collectively enrolled
395 students in 2011-2012. The data revealed that Black, Hispanic and ELL students were under-
represented to a statistically significant degree in Honors and AP courses.
Student Enrollment Student Enrollment

53
Grades 9 – 12 Honors and AP Courses
# % # %
Total 1963 395
Black 346 18% 37 9%
Hispanic 923 47% 122 31%
ELL 179 9% 10 3%
The District asserted that it does not have a tracking program or system for determining which
students may apply for or participate in Honors and AP courses, and there is no single “point of
entry” for such courses; so students may apply for such courses at any grade level at which they
are offered. In addition, the District stated that it does not have any screening programs designed
to identify/refer or test/evaluate students for Honors or AP courses or their prerequisites for any
students, including those from underrepresented racial or national origin groups or ELL students.
The District stated that guidance counselors and teachers generally are asked to encourage students
to apply for Honors and AP courses, and to specifically speak to any student who has
“demonstrated the potential to be successful” and to support that student in the application process.
OCR determined that the District informs parents of students entering Grades 9 through 12 of
Honors and AP courses by sending them a letter (in both English and Spanish) informing them of
the Honors and AP application period and of scheduled information sessions regarding the Honors
and AP Program. In addition, the schools’ course catalogs list each Honors and AP course; and
the District publishes an Honors Booklet, which describes what Honors and AP courses entail,
their prerequisites, any required assessments, and the application and appeal processes. OCR
determined that the Honors Booklet is available on the District’s website, at all guidance offices,
and at the Parent Information Center.
The District stated that students must apply for Honors and AP courses, and that the application
must be signed by the parent/guardian to ensure that the parent supports the student’s application.
If a parent does not sign the application, and a teacher believes that a student would be successful
in Honors and AP courses, the District will contact the parent to encourage them to sign the
application.
The District indicated that each applicant was scored as follows: 80% on current grades and/or
grades for prerequisite courses to determine student’s current achievement; 10% on State test

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