Educational Policy as Text and Action

Abstract

Concern over the complicity of mass compulsory schooling in the reproduction of social inequality prompted the development of educational policies that increased resources for schools attended by students considered to be at risk of school failure. This article examines one such policy that provided for the differential distribution of educational resources in the inner city of Toronto, Canada. It is argued that while this policy addressed systemic inequality through schooling by placing increased resources in the hands of inner-city school staff it also structured educational knowledge about families. As such, it reaffirmed a normative relation between mass compulsory schooling and the nuclear; two-parent family. Other family forms, such as single-parent families, were constructed as deviant from the normative order embedded in the educational policy. Data are derived from interviews with principals, teachers, administrators, and school social workers involved in developing, implementing, and administering the policy.