Gangsters, hoochie mamas, and decent kids: academic taxonomies and teacher bias in a disciplinary alternative education program

Abstract Teachers have been shown to evaluate students' behavior and academic performance unequally. Drawing on ethnographic data from a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP), this article examines how teachers and program staff perceived and made distinctions among students in an acutely punitive school environment. Extending Pierre Bourdieu's (1989) concept of “academic taxonomies,” we demonstrate how, despite the homogeneity of the student body in terms of misbehavior, teachers and staff drew on what we term a shared “disciplinary student taxonomy” to make distinctions among students, one that reflected race, class, and gender biases. We illustrate how this disciplinary student taxonomy translates onto formal disciplinary documents.