“This School is Killing my Soul”: Threat Rigidity Responses to High-Stakes Accountability Policies

Abstract

Accountability-era reforms have promulgated a discourse of crisis and a looming threat for public schools. While these threats negatively affect all, this paper focuses on how schools’ responses to these threats shape novice Teach for America Corp Members’ (CM) socialization. By analyzing nearly 6,000 daily reflections from 38 CMs about their experiences during a high-stakes cheating scandal, we argue that schools’ responses indicated a threat rigidity response that allowed what we call the mesosystem of transgressions to occur. Our implications present ways to (a) mitigate threats inflicted on schools through unjust policies and practices and (b) enact equitable public schools.