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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Intellectual Challenges in the Ecology of Cities

J. Morgan Grove, Mary L. Cadenasso, Steward T. A. Pickett, Gary E. Machlis, and William R. Burch

in The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology: Space, Scale, and Time for the Study of Cities

This chapter discusses the historical connections between biophysical ecology and sociological approaches to urban ecology. This historical narrative lays the foundation for linking the study of ... More

This chapter discusses the historical connections between biophysical ecology and sociological approaches to urban ecology. This historical narrative lays the foundation for linking the study of spatial heterogeneity in the social and economic sciences with the contemporary understanding of spatial heterogeneity in biophysical ecology that is discussed in the next chapter. To provide context to these historical connections, the chapter first gives an overview of contemporary ecology and its subdisciplines. It then describes the Chicago School of urban ecology and some of its critiques. It locates the Chicago School in the context of four dominant biological perspectives that social scientists have used for the study of cities, before concluding this historical narrative in terms of spatial and organizational complexity issues for the study of urban ecological systems.Less

Urban School Reform, Professionalization, and the Science of Education

in School, Society, & State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890 – 1940

In a series of chapters published in the Forum in 1892, Joseph Mayer Rice criticized St. Louis schools for their “absolute lack of sympathy for the child.” His critique of the interjection of ... More

In a series of chapters published in the Forum in 1892, Joseph Mayer Rice criticized St. Louis schools for their “absolute lack of sympathy for the child.” His critique of the interjection of politics into school administration and his argument that professional expertise and merit should run the schools reflected a growing critique in the 1890s of city governance in general and school governance in particular, and pointed to two of the major lines of reform activity over the next fifty years: Efforts to revise pedagogy and broaden the school curriculum and aims on the one hand, and efforts to transform school governance on the other. This chapter analyzes urban school reform and professionalization, arguing that both shaped the growth of state power in America, and examines how the reform of urban schools catalyzed the development of the science of education and provided an important impetus and audience for new education expertise.Less

A Mind Is a Wonderful Thing to Invest In: Philanthropy and the New York City Public Schools

Amy Brown

in A Good Investment?: Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School

This chapter places the ethnography into the context of a political economy of urban school reform in New York City. It critiques the popular documentaries Waiting for “Superman” (Guggenheim 2010) ... More

This chapter places the ethnography into the context of a political economy of urban school reform in New York City. It critiques the popular documentaries Waiting for “Superman” (Guggenheim 2010) and The Lottery (Sackler 2010), and looks not only at key figures and movements in urban education reform and the school choice movement since 2000, but also at corporate philanthropists whose financial altruism contributes to a market-based logic in education. It analyzes how these reforms articulate with the construction and contestation of racial meaning at College Preparatory Academy. The end of the chapter revisits some of the school’s image management and marketing practices, highlighting the importance that is necessarily placed on corporatization and image management in order to maintain needed resources in the context of New York City education reform. Those who are more interested in the ethnographic portrayal of College Prep may wish to skip this chapter, since it functions to provide a more macrolevel sociohistorical context for the school.Less

Maintaining a “Commitment to Everyone”: Toward a Vision of Equitable Development in Urban Public Schooling

Linn Posey-Maddox

in When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education

This final chapter highlights the need for critical and nuanced studies of urban school transformation, as well as evaluations of “progress” and “reform” in urban education that extend beyond ... More

This final chapter highlights the need for critical and nuanced studies of urban school transformation, as well as evaluations of “progress” and “reform” in urban education that extend beyond commonly used markers such as rising test scores, the presence of the middle-class, and greater material resources. It offers a new way to think about and address the role of middle-class parents in school integration efforts, based on the goal of producing equitable development in public education. The chapter concludes with a focus on education policy and practice, providing several recommendations for policy makers, district and school staff, and parents based on the findings of the study.Less

A Strategic Opportunity

Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara

in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities

This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to use an education initiative in Philadelphia—Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI)—to examine the impact of policies and policy discourses that ... More

This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to use an education initiative in Philadelphia—Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI)—to examine the impact of policies and policy discourses that position the middle and upper-middle classes as inherently more worthy than other sectors of the population. It argues that the benefits of this project came at some cost to important sectors of the population. Low-income and minority students in particular found their access to resources and opportunities constrained by the initiative. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

Citizens, Customers, and City Schools

Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara

in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities

This chapter returns to the larger questions raised in this book about equity and entitlement, market solutions to social problems, the valorizing of the middle class, and the tensions between ... More

This chapter returns to the larger questions raised in this book about equity and entitlement, market solutions to social problems, the valorizing of the middle class, and the tensions between notions of public benefit and private costs. It outlines key considerations emerging from this research that could be used in devising more equitable policy solutions, and draws from the cases of Boston and Wake County, North Carolina to suggest policy alternatives.Less

School Choice as a Civil Right: The Political Construction of a Claim and Its Implications for School Desegregation

Janelle Scott

in Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation

This chapter discusses school choice as a civil rights issue. Drawing from historical, political, and sociological literatures and legal documents, the chapter discusses the factors that construct ... More

This chapter discusses school choice as a civil rights issue. Drawing from historical, political, and sociological literatures and legal documents, the chapter discusses the factors that construct market-based choice as a civil right for poor parents of color. These include (1) conservative framing of school choice, (2) legal jurisprudence combined with the expansion of the suburbs and the subsequent race and social class isolation of many large urban school districts, and (3) the significant support of philanthropists on the expansion of charter school reform.Less

“This Is Not an Inner-City School!”: Marketing Grant Elementary

Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara

in Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities: Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities

This chapter examines the campaign to attract Center City families to Grant Elementary School (a pseudonym), a school located in an affluent part of downtown Philadelphia. Drawing from over two years ... More

This chapter examines the campaign to attract Center City families to Grant Elementary School (a pseudonym), a school located in an affluent part of downtown Philadelphia. Drawing from over two years of ethnographic research conducted with Grant’s parents’ organization, it describes how a group of middle- and upper-middle-class parents marketed the school to other professional families, and the correspondence between their efforts and the Center City Schools Initiative (CCSI). The chapter picks up on an earlier theme—a consensus within the city about the virtues of middle-class families and their role in sustaining the city—and shows how that same consensus was manifested at the school level.Less

Introduction: District Progressives and the Progressive School District

David A. Gamson

in The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

The book’s opening chapter introduces key concepts that rest at the core of The Importance of Being Urban and identifies the years between 1913 and 1928 as crucial to the forging of district ... More

The book’s opening chapter introduces key concepts that rest at the core of The Importance of Being Urban and identifies the years between 1913 and 1928 as crucial to the forging of district progressivism. Several dilemmas faced Progressive Era school leaders in the early twentieth century; among them was the challenge of harnessing the exciting pedagogical experiments emerging in small, often independent, schools and spreading those innovations throughout large urban districts. Gamson argues that by examining school reform at the level of the urban school system, one sees that “district progressives” often blended approaches that historians have viewed as incompatible, such as hands-on, child-centered instructional practices with more rigid testing and tracking initiatives. Through a comparative analysis of school systems in four western cities—Oakland, Denver, Portland, and Seattle—he demonstrates how the willful eclecticism of district practitioners often mirrored that of municipal leaders. The introduction raises central questions that will be explored throughout the book, including: what did it mean to be a progressive school district? And how did progressives blend science and efficiency with democratic practices in ways that they believed ultimately offered students equal educational opportunities?Less

Contesting Myths, Critiquing Cosmopolitanism, and Creating the New Cairo School of Urban Studies

Diane Singerman and Paul Amar

in Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East

This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and ... More

This introductory chapter presents some collective findings on the novelty and complexity of globalizing Cairo. It launches a set of questions that will lead to more productive, critical, and democratic approaches for producing knowledge about the Middle East. It lays out the specificities of the Cairo School of Urban Studies' agenda and methods, and, in particular, the book's critique and careful appropriation of cosmopolitanism. In brief, the chapter recognizes that cosmopolitanism has often been imbedded in transnationalist, normative, universalist, and imperialist discourses. Nevertheless, when reworked through critical scholarship and public action, cosmopolitanism may inform an emancipatory counter-ethic beyond the limits of nationalism, fear, and narrow identity politics, one that complements the Cairo School's experiments with post-positivist research methodologies. However, first, the chapter returns to the events that confirmed Cairo's reemergence as a critical site for action and inquiry, and which made the release of this book timely.Less

Outsiders Reshape the Educational Landscape

Carolyn T. Adams

in From the Outside In: Suburban Elites, Third-Sector Organizations, and the Reshaping of Philadelphia

This chapter examines how actors outside Philadelphia have reshaped the city's educational landscape by changing the school governance structure, fostering school choice, and shifting responsibility ... More

This chapter examines how actors outside Philadelphia have reshaped the city's educational landscape by changing the school governance structure, fostering school choice, and shifting responsibility to independent schools. In particular, it assesses the land-use impacts of shifting to a market model of urban schooling in Philadelphia. It shows how nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies are reshaping publicly funded schools in greater Philadelphia, mainly through funding. The chapter first considers the decision of the state of Pennsylvania to take over the Philadelphia schools in 2001 before turning to the proliferation of charter schools in the city. It then discusses the Great Schools Compact, a portfolio model adopted by Philadelphia in late 2011 to achieve continuous improvement in operating urban school districts. It also explores the role played by foundations in Philadelphia's school reform.Less

Labor Market Outcomes in Urban Schools: The Role of Gender

in Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920

The transformation in school organization was (naturally) most complete in urban schools. The availability of detailed personnel lists from several of the cities led the scholars to study the role of ... More

The transformation in school organization was (naturally) most complete in urban schools. The availability of detailed personnel lists from several of the cities led the scholars to study the role of gender in the determination of salaries and administrative positions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While women came to dominate teaching per se, gender still functioned as a divide in terms of pay or access to decision-making authority; a portion of the lower salaries of female teachers and their relative underrepresentation in administrative posts cannot be explained by gender differences in experience or training, suggesting that maleness per se was still an attribute valued by school boards, at least in certain settings.Less

Magnet Schools, MSAP, and New Opportunities to Promote Diversity

Claire Smrekar and Ellen Goldring

in Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation

This chapter describes the use of magnet schools to promote integration and suggests how federal policy, including the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), could support these efforts. It ... More

This chapter describes the use of magnet schools to promote integration and suggests how federal policy, including the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), could support these efforts. It establishes a framework for policy makers to utilize MSAP to achieve racial and socioeconomic diversity across urban school districts, and suggests that magnets schools continue to play an important role in the policy discourse and priorities linked to desegregation.Less

Choice, Crisis, and Urban Endangerment

Keisha Lindsay

in In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools

This chapter details the material and discursive reality that informs ABMS supporters’ anti-racist and gender-biased effort to address what ails black boys in urban schools. On the one hand, ... More

This chapter details the material and discursive reality that informs ABMS supporters’ anti-racist and gender-biased effort to address what ails black boys in urban schools. On the one hand, neoliberal educational reform and on on-going conversations about a transracial “boy” crisis inform these supporters’ contention that “law and order” in the classroom is key to ensuring that black boys, like all boys, grow up to achieve their “natural” status as patriarchs. On the other hand, the discourse that posits black males as nearly obsolete or as an “endangered” species in the systemically racist labor market, criminal justice system, and elsewhere shapes these supporters’ willingness and ability to challenge anti-black racism in the classroom and beyond.Less

School Partnerships

Polly L. Knowlton Cockett, Janet E. Dyment, Mariona Espinet, and Yu Huang

Alex Russ and Marianne E. Krasny (eds)

in Urban Environmental Education Review

This chapter examines how schools that establish rich and sustaining partnerships with local communities enhance opportunities for urban environmental education. It considers “socioecological ... More

This chapter examines how schools that establish rich and sustaining partnerships with local communities enhance opportunities for urban environmental education. It considers “socioecological refrains” that incorporate stewardship, pedagogy, interrelationships, and heritage and highlight the role played by schools in shaping sustainable cities through urban environmental education. These refrains promote a connectedness to place through the use of the local environment to stimulate learning, the development of curricula and pedagogies that embrace the development of sustainable cities, and the establishment of links with the community to foster relationships, stewardship, and resiliency. Case studies from Canada, Australia, China, and Spain are presented to illustrate these refrains and to show initiatives at work such as green schools. The chapter demonstrates that urban schools can use local environments to serve as stimulus, context, and content for teaching and learning about sustainability.Less

Finding Middle Ground: Music Education in Urban Settings

Catherine Larsen

in The Musical Experience: Rethinking Music Teaching and Learning

How can integration of the arts into classroom curricula and instruction, integration that honors the arts as discrete content areas, address the absence of arts instruction in today’s schools? What ... More

How can integration of the arts into classroom curricula and instruction, integration that honors the arts as discrete content areas, address the absence of arts instruction in today’s schools? What role can arts educators play in facilitating this trend toward a stronger and more significant presence for the arts in culturally rich and diverse yet challenging urban school environments? This chapter poses answers to these questions, considering issues in urban school reform, arts education in the urban context, teacher professionalization and development of communities of practice, and the possibilities inherent in collaborative partnerships. The chapter also includes a review of relevant research and reports results of longitudinal research in collaborative urban partnerships.Less

School Information, Parental Decisions, and the Digital Divide: The SmartChoices Project in Hartford, Connecticut

Jack Dougherty, Diane Zannoni, Maham Chowhan, Courteney Coyne, Benjamin Dawson, Tehani Guruge, and Begaeta Nukic

in Educational Delusions?: Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair

This chapter examines how urban parents navigate the growth of public school choice policies and information on the internet. We created SmartChoices, a public school search tool for the Hartford, ... More

This chapter examines how urban parents navigate the growth of public school choice policies and information on the internet. We created SmartChoices, a public school search tool for the Hartford, Connecticut, region; conducted parent workshops (with hands—on instruction in English and Spanish) to narrow the digital divide; and collected quantitative and qualitative data to investigate how SmartChoices influenced parents’ decision—making processes. Based on our small sample of ninety—three workshop participants, we found that two—thirds either clarified or changed their top—ranked school after using the website. Furthermore, several also found what they defined as “better” schools (with higher test scores or more racially balanced student populations) that were located closer to their neighborhoods than their initial top—rated choices. But making information more widely available is not a neutral act, as some parents used our search tool to avoid schools with high concentrations of students from racial groups other than their own. Overall, this study contributes to the scholarly literature that views school choice as a double—edged sword, with potentially positive outcomes for some families and negative consequences for others left behind.Less