Text as Data: A New Approach for Examining Equity in Education
About the Project:
- Investigate the role of carceral ideology, the propensity to solve problems through surveillance, coercion, and confinement—in limiting charter and traditional public schools’ potential to reduce inequality.
- Use text mining to construct a multidimensional measure of carceral ideology using words, phrases, and ideas from the handbooks of 11,381 U.S. public schools.
- Evaluate the extent to which schools serving larger minority student populations are more likely to use carceral language and have increased punishment frequency.
Findings:
- Traditional public schools are more likely to use carceral language if located in towns or rural areas, less likely in urban areas.
- Magnet schools and schools located in cities are less likely to use carceral language across the board.
- Schools serving majority-Black or Hispanic populations are more likely to use carceral language if located in towns or rural areas.
- Schools in states with high poverty rates, especially in the South, exhibit more frequent carceral language.
- The three most common negative words in handbooks were all related to student infractions, while the most common positive word, “appropriate” is also a carceral term.