1. Dealing with emerging consequences: "a successful SINI that is failing"

    1. The 'etc.' in these listing are ethnographic RFPs.  We know altogether little about the practical constraining conversations on these conversations.

      It is an ongoing task of the State (as "Local Educational Agency (LEA)" of the federal NCLB) to make lists of failing schools.  Making this list, we can imagine (i.e. I do not have direct data about the meetings and conversations when state officials made these lists), must refer indexically
      1. back to
        1. NCLB regulations
        2. State regulations
        3. etc.
      2. forward to:
        1. New York City and its regulations and politics including
          1. the mayor
          2. the superintendent
          3. the head of the unions
          4. etc.
        2. etc.
    2. And it is a task of the LEA's own local agencies to notify the schools that they are on the list of "Schools in Need of Improvement (SINI)." Again we could analyze the many conversations as indexing backward and forward to other conversations.
    3. And thus it is the task of a SINI, that is, first, of its principal to
      1. a school that is listed as a 'SINI' though it should not have been
        Teacher_1: We are a successful SINI that is failing?
        Teacher_2: Or are we a failing SINI because we are succeeding, excelling? [laughing throughout room]
        Teacher_1: Face it. We're succeeding and the DOE thinks we're failures.
        Principal: Actually, they [the DOE] know we met our AYP last year and this year.
        Teacher_3: So, why are we SINI again?
        [...]
        Principal: I'm frustrated too! We are a remarkable success here. All of you know that. I certainly know that. They [the DOE] say we need improvement because we failed to meet the ELA AYP, but we didn't….I don't want us to get hung up on labels. We know that we met the AYP and still we need to direct some energy into all the things that get thrown at us for being a SINI. We know how to do this, even if we don't want to, right?

        Nonetheless, for the next half hour, teachers worked to make sense of the SINI designation. The teachers focused on how to attend to the failure, w hich the students were not, in the aggregate, demonstrating. They decided to have the students do more concentrated vocabulary and arithmetic in small groups; to tutor individual students for a larger part of each day; and to make weekly benchmarks for their classes to meet. They were, as a group, addressing the failure as if they had not succeeded. ... They ... performed attending to failure and "passed" as a "failing school."
        (Koyama 2008: Chapter 8)
      2. parents who would rather have their school be a 'SINI' because of the extra services they get if it is so identified
        Lots of parents here work two or three jobs. Both parents, usually. So, having their kids in a safe educational environment allowed them more flexible and longer work schedules. By putting their kids in SES, they were able to pick them up at 5:30 instead of 3:30 and that’s got to be a big difference in work hours. Most of our parents are Mexican immigrants who want their children to succeed. So, you know they do what they think will help their kids. Like work more hours to provide for them and put them in tutoring… Parents aren’t going to stop this just because the school got off some list it was never on. Hey, if I had to work, I’d put Alyssa in SES too.
        (Koyama 2008: Chapter 8).

and thus ... consequences