Search Results

The Choice Conundrum: Challenges and Opportunities for Voluntary School Desegregation Policy

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

in When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation

This chapter uses the school choice trajectories of four different districts to highlight how choice can be used to either promote or undermine school diversity efforts. It also draws upon the ... More

This chapter uses the school choice trajectories of four different districts to highlight how choice can be used to either promote or undermine school diversity efforts. It also draws upon the experiences of other school systems to illustrate how school choice might best in the movement toward educational regionalism.Less

A More Perfect UnionReconciling School Choice Policy with Equality of Opportunity Goals

Janelle Scott and Amy Stuart Wells

in Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance

Janelle Scott and Amy Stuart Wells delve into the problems and potential of school choice in either exacerbating or alleviating the opportunity gap. They contend that school choice policies within a ... More

Janelle Scott and Amy Stuart Wells delve into the problems and potential of school choice in either exacerbating or alleviating the opportunity gap. They contend that school choice policies within a test-focused educational system can advance the goal of greater educational equity if those policies are conceptualized and constructed in a manner that acknowledges the structural inequality within which public schools exist today and if they include sensible and powerful provisions to counteract the effects of those inequalities.Currently, however, the vast majority of charter school and school voucher policies do not provide incentives for maintaining diverse schools, despite a significant research base that finds multiple individual educational benefits for students who attend such institutions and for the broader, societal benefits of having citizens who can interact across race and socioeconomic status.Less

School choice versus social cohesion: examining the ways education policies shape children's geographies in the UK

Susie Weller

in Critical Geographies of Childhood and Youth: Contemporary Policy and Practice

Drawing on a four-year study that explored the significance of social capital for children and parents during the transition to secondary school, this chapter explores the relationship between ... More

Drawing on a four-year study that explored the significance of social capital for children and parents during the transition to secondary school, this chapter explores the relationship between families' responses to school choice policies and children's everyday geographies. In so doing, it reflects critically on the spatial connotations of, and tensions between (national) school choice policies and wider drives by the New Labour government to promote (local) cohesion. It is apparent that from parents' and children's perspectives that imagined, aspirational and fearful geographies are implicated in the process of school choice.Less

Afterword with Dr. Gary Orfield

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

in When the Fences Come Down: Twenty-First-Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation

The afterword of When the Fences Come Down documents a conversation with one of the nation’s leading experts on school desegregation, Dr. Gary Orfield.

Politics, Policy, and Contributions

Peter Dunbar and Mike Haridopolos

in The Modern Republican Party in Florida

The structure of Florida’s government and the state’s public policies have been transformed during the modern two-party era, and the chapter identifies the contributions made by the Republican ... More

The structure of Florida’s government and the state’s public policies have been transformed during the modern two-party era, and the chapter identifies the contributions made by the Republican partisans during that transformation. The chapter includes a narrative of the Republican dogma in areas of public policies, including criminal justice and prison reform; taxation and economic incentives; consumer protection; and environmental reform, including reform for the Florida Everglades. The chapter discusses the policy changes that occurred in bipartisan efforts between Republicans and Democrats; it describes the policy changes in the wake of the Republican majority, including changes in school choice and other areas; and it contrasts the changes from the policies of the one-party, Pork Chop era, to the two-party system.Less

The Future of Desegregation and Choice

David J. Armor

in Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law

Like most issues stimulated by the civil rights movement over the past four decades, the tangled web of policy questions associated with school desegregation defies easy resolution. The debate over ... More

Like most issues stimulated by the civil rights movement over the past four decades, the tangled web of policy questions associated with school desegregation defies easy resolution. The debate over desegregation policy has touched upon many aspects and levels of human society, including values, law, education, and social theory; therefore, arriving a succinct set of policy conclusions, especially one accompanied by substantial consensus, is unrealistic. The debate cannot and should not be reduced simply to a matter of law, to ideological differences, or to disagreements over social science theories. Any attempt to oversimplify the desegregation issue does injustice to those with the greatest stake in its outcome, namely, the students, parents, and educators who reap its rewards and shoulder its costs. Adding to this complexity is the fact that desegregation issues have shifted so much over time that the important policy questions differ from one decade to the next. During the 1950s, the legal and value debate was over compulsory segregation, and social theorists debated whether separate schools were harmful or beneficial for children. During the 1970s, the legal and value debate shifted to compulsory desegregation and whether the benefits of mandatory busing justified its deep divisiveness and its unintended consequences. During the 1990s the debate has shifted once again, this time in several directions. The federal courts struggle with the conditions under which to grant unitary status (and dismissal) to school districts with court-ordered desegregation plans. Surprisingly, considering the great controversy in the 1970s, school boards in the 1990s debate whether to seek unitary status or, if not under court order, to adopt desegregation plans on their own. Civil rights groups are back in court, not only to oppose unitary status but also to demand even broader remedies than those granted during the 1970s. They have requested metropolitan remedies between cities and suburbs, and they have petitioned for racial parity in classrooms, discipline rates, and even academic achievement. Ironically, some of these latest court challenges have come full circle, invoking the psychological harm thesis of Brown that most legal scholars dismissed as irrelevant to the law. Less

Does School Choice Add to Residential Ethnic Segregation?

Richard Harris and Ron Johnston

in Ethnic Segregation Between Schools: Is It Increasing or Decreasing in England?

The English systems of school choice and allocation may result in greater ethnic segregation between schools than between neighbourhoods. This chapter looks at that proposition and asks to what ... More

The English systems of school choice and allocation may result in greater ethnic segregation between schools than between neighbourhoods. This chapter looks at that proposition and asks to what extent school levels of ethnic segregation reflect neighbourhood ethnic composition, where do they not, and for which types of school are the differences greatest? It makes a simple comparison of the segregation between schools and between neighbourhoods then, acknowledging the limitations of that comparison, employs a more sophisticated analysis to compare the diversity of schools’ intakes with what they would look like under a hypothetical system without choice. In the majority of cases, intakes into schools reflect the neighbourhoods that surround them and are not dissimilar to what would be expected under a neighbourhood-based system of pupil allocation. There is little evidence that the current system of school choice raises ethnic segregation substantially.Less

Epilogue

Michelle A. Purdy

in Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools

The book concludes by addressing how formal schooling for many African Americans is still an avenue for upward mobility in a U.S. society very much grappling with race and racism. The decisions ... More

The book concludes by addressing how formal schooling for many African Americans is still an avenue for upward mobility in a U.S. society very much grappling with race and racism. The decisions African Americans make about schooling are not simple, and black families struggle with the many variables that affect black students’ academic, social, psychological, and emotional outcomes. As African Americans continue to face dilemmas about schooling options and endure gaps in access to equitable public schools, they sometimes believe that historically white private schools are the better choice for their children. Yet racism and racial matters transcend school type, and many are challenging school cultures, no matter the type of institution, to be more inclusive and diverse.Less