Teaching
Philosophy
I believe that sustainable learning occurs when students find joy in the process. Joy can be achieved when culturally relevant pedagogy creates positive connections with learning. Research has proven that forming and storing memories allows individuals to display much of their intelligence. How? Learners use their memory to engage in logic and reasoning when processing new information. Supportive learning conditions must be relevant to the learner’s time and identity for substantive processing to take place. This form of culturally relevant learning enables students to show up as their authentic selves, use their own experiences to make connections or draft questions, and fuels interest/intellectual curiosity. The outcome is meaningful, positive cognitive associations with learning.
Impact
I have learned effective ways to facilitate conversations and solutions that focus on learning barriers such as poverty and equity. My first-hand experiences with these issues have provided me with insights and explanations for their impact on learning and bandwidth. I’ve learned that institutional, teaching-based solutions are needed to assist first-generation, minority, and low-income students with post-secondary school matriculation. That is the contribution I will make as a professor. I will create pathways for teaching (and research) that implements interventions for classroom participation obstacles such as exposure, culture capital, mental/emotional wellness, and academic skill development.
Student Testimonials
"Toni Gordon was a very engaging guest speaker and has a unique and important perspective on state interventions within urban schools as a black woman in this country."
"I thought it was interesting how Toni described why Black people do not vote. It makes sense that minoritized groups do not vote or trust the political process because they do not see any progress made for them."
I" believe Toni's research helped a lot because most political or any type of apathy developed, especially from people of color, connect back to early education."
My research infuses education and behavior politics. My topics of interest include civic engagement and school accountability policy. My personal experience gave me insight into the practices of nondemocratic state policies (i.e., school closures, charter conversions, and takeovers) and their long-term effects. Wrap-around services were removed when my school was taken over by an emergency manager. Teachers who paid property taxes to the city were replaced by teachers from outside the community. The elected schoolboard lost decision-making power. Residents lost hope. Scholars who study the impact of school accountability policies like takeovers and school closures have found that these policies disparately impact black communities and adversely shapes their political participation over time. My research takes on similar topics to illustrate that the consequences of accountability extend beyond participation. I plan to highlight the negative social, economic, and behavior responses of groups affected by nondemocratic education policies. I hope to inform future policy that supports students versus harming them.
Current Projects
Dissertation
Declining education performance in public schools has been a reoccurring theme on national and state policy agendas since the 1960’s (Bishop, 1989). Research has determined that performance declines are most common among students who attend public schools in cities as opposed to students who attend suburban schools (Cotton, 1991; Ladd, 2012) The cause of city school failure is linked to higher concentrations of poverty that generate lower taxable incomes that leave urban schools underfunded. Poverty is also associated with other social problems that impede the goals of learning to cause lower performance on academic achievement metrics like reading and math (Darling-Hammond, 2013). Appeals to rectify the urban/suburban achievement gap have resulted in several federal and state policy reforms that target Black and urban schools (Henig et al., 1999). States have shifted from property tax to enrollment-based school funding to address funding inequities. States have also adopted market-based schooling options for parents with children enrolled in failing school districts. Other strategies have focused on holding educational actors accountable for school failure. Neither state nor federal education reforms have resulted in a universal strategy for improving urban schools. As a result, similar – and sometimes the same – schools are targeted by education policy (Gordon, 2023). The consequences of revolving education reform may cause more harm than good by failing to address the cause(s) of school failure while disrupting the foundational networks that uphold urban schools and their communities. Small-town urban schools – that lack financial capital and other institutional support(s) seen in big city school systems – are the most vulnerable to disruptions in the school ecosystem. Using a multi-method approach, this research examines the social and political community consequences that result from multiple adverse education policy experiences in small urban schools. The goal of this project is to highlight the long-term impact of school reforms on community health. Examining the consequences of education reform on smaller urban school systems, and the unobserved roles these institutions play in community stability should inform more culturally competent education legislation to support the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.
The Social Construction of Urban Schools and Accountability Policy Design
Michigan's use of punitive school accountability (state takeovers of local education institutions, school closings, and school reconstitution) to turn around low performing schools has increased since 2001. State education performance trends suggest declines in academic performance among all schools and student subgroups. However, the use of sanctions and punitive policy strategies has disproportionately impacted urban and predominantly Black schools throughout the state (Strunk et al, 2016). This paper explores how the social construction of urban schools, as opposed to academic performance, could lead to deficit framing and adverse education policy experiences for black students.
Third-Party Contractors and Stakeholder Trust in Public Schools
Traditional U.S. primary and secondary schools are supported by public funding and taxpayer dollars; however, the use of private, for-profit companies to provide school support services has increased over the past forty years. Now, most public-school culinary, classroom aid, health, social work, and staffing needs are provided by third-party contractors with centralized operations outside of schools. There are no laws that prohibit private businesses from providing public school provisions; however, the use of these entities could undermine trust in local education. Private companies are often exempt from the regulation and compliance policies that govern public institutions. Without a similar system of checks and balances, private company managed school services are vulnerable to the business’s operational inefficiencies. Failures in contractor quality can negatively impact other, dependent educational functions – leaving public schools to take the wrap for market problems. With universal enrollment and enrollment-based funding becoming common place in state education policy, parental dissatisfaction, and reduced trust in schools, has the potential to negatively impact enrollment and funding in public education institutions. Using interviews with public school stakeholders in Detroit, MI – a school district that experienced food shortages caused by labor strikes at a private contractor’s distribution point – I explore how failures in contracted services impact stakeholder’s trust in schools.
State Intervention and Racialized Policy Aversion in Michigan's Black School Districts
For the past thirty years, Michigan has used Emergency Management (EM) and receiverships to solve city and school finance issues. The impact of these state intervention policies has been highly publicized and has led to institutional distrust among black citizens in urban communities —with the Flint water crisis standing out as the most infamous and high-profile example. A possible outcome of local distrust of state leadership is stakeholder resistance to state intervention across policy sectors and among policies that are perceived as beneficial and less contentious. This paper examines the Michigan Partnership Model (PM) – a state intervention policy that uses partnerships to turnaround the state’s lowest performing schools – to examine how adverse policy experiences shape school accountability aversion in Urban Cities. Under the PM, some school districts that previously experienced Emergency Management can work collaboratively with the state to improve education performance. This paper examines how policy visibility and prior, negative policy experiences (e.g., emergency financial management) shape perceptions of new policy. First, I used an analysis of local news media to compare the visibility and discourse of the EM and PM policies. Second, I use interviews with stakeholders in Michigan schools with and without historical accounts of state intervention to gauge whether past experiences with EM policy impacts stakeholder’s trust in partnership agreements. I find that stakeholders with EM experiences have more negative views of the state – not the PM itself. However, I do find that visibility plays a role in stakeholders’ knowledge and subsequent aversion toward the PM policy.
School Choice and Parent Participation in School District Politics
We examine whether policies that enable families to opt out of locally provided public services are associated with reduced political participation. Our study is focused on two types of school choice policy in Michigan: inter-district choice and charter schools. Do parents who send their children to schools of choice or charter schools vote at lower or higher rates than those who use their residentially assigned public school in a school-specific bond election? Does turnout vary by election type? We conduct our analysis by matching student level data to the Michigan voter file based on the addresses, in order to identify voter households with children enrolled in school by type. We find that voter turnout in off-cycle school bond elections is significantly lower for households with children who participate in school choice—both charter and inter-district choice. There are also large differences in turnout rate associated with race/ethnicity and economically disadvantaged households. By comparison, households with children who participate in inter-district choice do not have significantly different turnout rates in an even-year midterm election.