Shaming families won’t transform our schools

Madison High School principal Carlotta Outley Brown’s new dress code for parents has caused a firestorm. The dress code forbids parents (read: mothers) from showing up at school wearing bonnets, pajamas, hair rollers and leggings. One mother who was dressed “unacceptably” was not only turned away from enrolling her child in the school, she was threatened with police removal when she protested.

Think about that. In a school whose population is majority-minority and low-income, a mother was turned away and threatened with punitive action — potential incarceration — for attempting to enroll her child.

Black and brown parents are often stereotyped as not caring enough about their children’s education. To turn parents away because of how they are dressed seems highly counterintuitive.

But doing so is one more example of “respectability politics.” Evelyn Higginbotham coined the term to describe the way minority groups police their behavior to fit white standards of decorum and behavior. Respectability politics runs rampant in schools that serve minority students. But it has no place on these school campuses, which should be opening their doors even wider to their students’ parents and guardians.

School administrators who institute these punitive practices —punishing students and parents for tardiness with fines, for being out of dress code, and so on — create environments that students and parents want to avoid, not become part of. The administrators say they do this because they value decorum and “high standards,” an arbitrary and classist term that has little evidence-based connection to academic achievement and instead focuses on superficial appearance and conformity. These practices discourage community and, worse, lead to the school-to-prison pipeline.

Administrators who institute such practices have lost sight of the ultimate goal: educating the whole child. That’s the goal of “restorative practices.” To disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and encourage attendance and parental participation in their child’s education, administrators must co-create a community with their students, their guardians and the entire neighborhood.

School leaders who use restorative practices see and value their students’ whole lives. Students and their families are often doing the best they can. Consider the reasons why students might arrive to school out of dress code: They might be living between homes, or have a washing machine that’s not functional, or a family member who’s incarcerated. Austin’s Barrington Elementary Principal Gilma Sanchez doesn’t shame those families. Instead, she keeps a closet of clothes so that students can change instead of missing school.

Administrators who aren’t caught up in superficial standards understand that if parents are showing up at their children’s school, they’re there because they value education. How they show up is far less important than that they show up.

Taylor is a doctoral student in educational leadership and policy and managing editor of Texas Education

Magazine online at UT Austin’s College of Education.