New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg
New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg

Author: Heather Lewis

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2015-04-26

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0807772569

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When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg centralized control of the citys schools in 2002, he terminated the citys 32-year experiment with decentralized school control dubbed by the mayor and the media as the Bad Old Days. Decentralization grew out of the community control movement of the 1960s, which was itself a response to the bad old days of central control of a school system that was increasingly segregated and unequal. In this probing historical account, Heather Lewis draws on new archival sources and oral histories to argue that the community control movement did influence school improvement, in particular African American and Puerto Rican communities in the 1970s and 80s. Lewis shows how educators with unique insights into the relationships between the schools and the communities they served enabled meaningful change, with a focus on instructional improvement and equity that would be familiar to many observers of contemporary education reform. With a resurgence of local organizing and potential challenges to mayoral control, this informative history will be important reading for todays educational and community leaders.

Without a Prayer
Without a Prayer

Author: Leslie Beth Ribovich

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2024-06-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1479817279

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"Though many see religion and race as separate public school issues, Ribovich reframes religion's role in twentieth-century American public education by using New York City as a window into how religion undergirded school policies and practices on race before and after school prayer and Bible-reading became unconstitutional"--

Racial Inequality in New York City since 1965
Racial Inequality in New York City since 1965

Author: Benjamin P. Bowser

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2019-09-01

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 1438475993

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A comprehensive exploration of racial inequality in New York City since 1965. In the past, the study of racial inequality in New York City has usually had a narrow focus, examining particular social problems affecting ethnic-racial groups. In contrast, this book provides a comprehensive overview of racial inequality in the city’s economy, housing, and education sectors over the last half-century. A collection of original essays by some of New York’s most well-known and emerging urban experts, Racial Inequality in New York City since 1965 explores what city government has done and failed to do to address racial inequality. It examines the changes in circumstances of Asian, Latino, West Indian, and African American New Yorkers, outlining how theirs have either improved or deteriorated relative to their white counterparts. The contributors also analyze how practices and policies in policing, public housing, public health, and community services have maintained racial inequality and discuss how political participation can increase social capital among city residents in order to reduce racial inequality. The book concludes by offering a compendium of practical recommendations and actions that can be implemented to address racial inequality in the city. “This book provides a broad and up-to-date survey of social and demographic trends in New York City. Unlike many other works, it crosses policy arenas and is not shy in advocating community action.” — J. Phillip Thompson, New York City Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives

Integrations
Integrations

Author: Lawrence Blum

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-05-12

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 022678603X

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"Education plays a central part in the history of racial inequality in America, with people of color long advocating for equal educational rights and opportunities. Though school desegregation initially was a boon for educational equality, schools began to resegregate in the 1980s, and schools are now more segregated than ever. In Integrations, historian Zoë Burkholder and philosopher Lawrence Blum set out to shed needed light on the enduring problem of segregation in American schools. From a historical perspective, the authors analyze how ideas about race influenced the creation and development of American public schools. Importantly, the authors focus on multiple marginalized groups in American schooling: African Americans, Native Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans. In the second half of the book, the authors explore what equal education should and could look like. They argue for a conception of "educational goods" (including the development of moral and civic capacities) that should and can be provided to every child through schooling--including integration itself. Ultimately, the authors show that in order to grapple with integration in a meaningful way, we must think of integration in the plural, both in its multiple histories and the many possible meanings of and courses of action for integration"--

The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North
The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North

Author: Brian Purnell

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1479881198

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Did American racism originate in the liberal North? An inquiry into the system of institutionalized racism created by Northern Jim Crow Jim Crow was not a regional sickness, it was a national cancer. Even at the high point of twentieth century liberalism in the North, Jim Crow racism hid in plain sight. Perpetuated by colorblind arguments about “cultures of poverty,” policies focused more on black criminality than black equality. Procedures that diverted resources in education, housing, and jobs away from poor black people turned ghettos and prisons into social pandemics. Americans in the North made this history. They tried to unmake it, too. Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide. The twelve original essays in this anthology unveil Jim Crow’s many strange careers in the North. They accomplish two goals: first, they show how the Jim Crow North worked as a system to maintain social, economic, and political inequality in the nation’s most liberal places; and second, they chronicle how activists worked to undo the legal, economic, and social inequities born of Northern Jim Crow policies, practices, and ideas. The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North.

Educating Harlem
Educating Harlem

Author: Ansley T. Erickson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0231544049

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Over the course of the twentieth century, education was a key site for envisioning opportunities for African Americans, but the very schools they attended sometimes acted as obstacles to black flourishing. Educating Harlem brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to provide a broad consideration of the history of schooling in perhaps the nation’s most iconic black community. The volume traces the varied ways that Harlem residents defined and pursued educational justice for their children and community despite consistent neglect and structural oppression. Contributors investigate the individuals, organizations, and initiatives that fostered educational visions, underscoring their breadth, variety, and persistence. Their essays span the century, from the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance through the 1970s fiscal crisis and up to the present. They tell the stories of Harlem residents from a wide variety of social positions and life experiences, from young children to expert researchers to neighborhood mothers and ambitious institution builders who imagined a dynamic array of possibilities from modest improvements to radical reshaping of their schools. Representing many disciplinary perspectives, the chapters examine a range of topics including architecture, literature, film, youth and adult organizing, employment, and city politics. Challenging the conventional rise-and-fall narratives found in many urban histories, the book tells a story of persistent struggle in each phase of the twentieth century. Educating Harlem paints a nuanced portrait of education in a storied community and brings much-needed historical context to one of the most embattled educational spaces today.

Schools of Our Own
Schools of Our Own

Author: Worth Kamili Hayes

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2019-12-15

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0810141205

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Winner, 2020 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award As battles over school desegregation helped define a generation of civil rights activism in the United States, a less heralded yet equally important movement emerged in Chicago. Following World War II, an unprecedented number of African Americans looked beyond the issue of racial integration by creating their own schools. This golden age of private education gave African Americans unparalleled autonomy to avoid discriminatory public schools and to teach their children in the best ways they saw fit. In Schools of Our Own, Worth Kamili Hayes recounts how a diverse contingent of educators, nuns, and political activists embraced institution building as the most effective means to attain quality education. Schools of Our Own makes a fascinating addition to scholarly debates about education, segregation, African American history, and Chicago, still relevant in contemporary discussions about the fate of American public schooling.

Blaming Teachers
Blaming Teachers

Author: Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1978808429

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In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers' professional legitimacy. Policymakers and school leaders understood teacher professionalization initiatives as efficient ways to bolster the bureaucratic order of the schools rather than as means to amplify teachers' authority and credibility.

Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools
Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools

Author: Raynard Sanders

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0807076074

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How charter schools have taken hold in three cities—and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back Charter schools once promised a path towards educational equity, but as the authors of this powerful volume show, market-driven education reforms have instead boldly reestablished a tiered public school system that segregates students by race and class. Examining the rise of charters in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, authors Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White show how charters—private institutions, usually set in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities—promote competition instead of collaboration and are driven chiefly by financial interests. Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how corporate charters position themselves as “public” to secure tax money but exploit their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries, using misleading information to promote false narratives of student success. In addition to showing how charter school expansion can deprive students of a quality education, the authors document several other lasting consequences of charter school expansion: • the displacement of experienced African American teachers • the rise of a rigid, militarized pedagogy such as SLANT • the purposeful starvation of district schools • and the loss of community control and oversight A revealing and illuminating look at one of the greatest threats to public education, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools explores how charter schools have shaped the educational landscape and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back.

The Choice We Face
The Choice We Face

Author: Jon Hale

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0807087505

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A comprehensive history of school choice in the US, from its birth in the 1950s as the most effective weapon to oppose integration to its lasting impact in reshaping the public education system today. Most Americans today see school choice as their inalienable right. In The Choice We Face, scholar Jon Hale reveals what most fail to see: school choice is grounded in a complex history of race, exclusion, and inequality. Through evaluating historic and contemporary education policies, Hale demonstrates how reframing the way we see school choice represents an opportunity to evolve from complicity to action. The idea of school choice, which emerged in the 1950s during the civil rights movement, was disguised by American rhetoric as a symbol of freedom and individualism. Shaped by the ideas of conservative economist Milton Friedman, the school choice movement was a weapon used to oppose integration and maintain racist and classist inequalities. Still supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, this policy continues to shape American education in nuanced ways, Hale shows—from the expansion of for-profit charter schools and civil rights–based reform efforts to the appointment of Betsy DeVos. Exposing the origins of a movement that continues to privilege middle- to upper-class whites while depleting the resources for students left behind, The Choice We Face is a bold, definitive new history that promises to challenge long-held assumptions on education and redefines our moment as an opportunity to save it—a choice we will not have for much longer.