Jacqueline Jenkins
Stanford University
Awarded Spring 2008
Thesis: Ghosts in the Machine: White Identity Politics, Reform, and Power in the Coalition of Essential Schools’ Urban Small Schools Network
Abstract: This dissertation examines the social construction and impact of “white” identity, culture, and institutional power in a small subculture of progressive educational reformers in the San Francisco Bay area who have founded and developed two small-by-design urban high schools influenced by the U.S.-based national school reform organization, The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). Using qualitative research methods—semi-structured interviews, participant observation, thick description, and discourse analysis—I follow key visionaries, school designers, and practitioners as they move through Coalition schools and networks in their attempts to enforce democratic practices, honor diversity, and challenge inequity along lines of race, class, gender, culture, and language in the creation of urban small schools. I explore how liberal, democratic ideologies about equal opportunity in the United States, contradictory forms of white liberal and anti-racist social identity, and structural discrimination combine to perpetuate inequity and preserve white supremacy even in schools that have sought to implement institutional reforms. I argue that social, ideological, and often invisible, forms of structural “whiteness” persist in spite of school “redesign” and explicit antiracist teaching in the urban small schools movement. The study uses a critical social theory framework to analyze institutional responses to “whiteness” in the form of equity-based “critical friendship groups” (CFGs), school change facilitation, and other resistance strategies in order to offer practical recommendations for how the Coalition, its regional affiliates, and its schools can improve their school reform work locally and nationally around issues of equity in the small schools movement.

Laura S. Chesson
The University of Massachusetts at Lowell
Graduate School of Education
Awarded Spring 2008
Thesis: Teacher Leadership in Support of School Reform in Boston Pilot Schools
Abstract: In the city of Boston there are twenty in-district charter schools, called “pilot schools” which have autonomy regarding budget, staffing, curriculum, governance, and calendar. One of the most compelling aspects of these schools is a leadership structure which is designed to support continuous improvement in curriculum, instruction, and assessment through extraordinary utilization of teacher leadership. This moves decision-making from the office of the principal to being distributed to all stakeholders. Recently, there have been state and city initiatives to encourage more schools in Massachusetts to become pilot schools, including the option for the most under-performing schools in the state to adopt the pilot school model in lieu of state DOE take-over. To support these initiatives there needs to be a greater understanding of the leadership model used by these schools. This study will examine teacher leadership as implemented in two CES pilot schools, Boston Arts Academy and Fenway High School. Using a mixed-methods approach, it will confirm the presence of those characteristics commonly cited by research as found in schools with strong teacher leadership, examine what these characteristics “look like” in these two schools, and provide an understanding of the history of the implementation of these characteristics.