Metropolitan school desegregation and parent and student attitudes: A longitudinal case study

This study examines changes in the attitudes of parents and students coincident with desegregation in a new single unified school district, with reassignment of both suburban white students and inner-city minority students. Data are presented for the year immediately preceding desegregation implementation and for three years following implementation. The final sample presented includes only those parents and students for whom complete data were available for each of these four years. A repeated measures analysis of variance was used to examine overall changes in racial and educational attitudes across time and to determine the differential impact of several intervening variables, including race, sex, child's grade level at the time of desegregation, which of five former school districts the families were in prior to desegregation, and the parents' perceived social status. Overall changes were found for several parent and student attitudes, largely during the first year of desegregation implementation. Several of the intervening variables were also significantly related to attitude changes, notably race and child's initial grade level.     

A longitudinal study of attitudes of students and parents coincident with court-ordered school desegregation

Attitudinal data were collected for a sample of 492 parents and public school children before implementation of a metropolitan desegregation plan and for 2 years after implementation. The variables measured included racial attitudes, feelings out desegregation, and school-related attitudes. There were small but significant changes on 7 of the 11 measures, with most of the changes occurring during the first year. There were race and grade-level differences on some of the variables before desegregation, but race and grade level were generally not related to changes over time.This research has been supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Division of Social Sciences.     

School district merger,busing, and the courts: Implications for school administrators

Many city school systems are faced with a situation of declining tax base, declining enrollments, and disproportionate minority ratios. Merger of city with surrounding school systems is one alternative to improve this situation. When city and surrounding systems contain disproportionate minority ratios the question may arise whether busing to achieve racial balance will likely be required by the courts. Review of desegregation litigation indicates that in the absence of intention to discriminate, the courts are not likely to require busing as a desegregation strategy. Further, school systems having achieved unitary status under court-approved desegregation plans may be allowed to adopt neighborhood school policies despite indications such policies would lead to partial resegregation.     

School Choice in Black and White: Private School Enrollment Among Racial Groups, 1990–2000

This study investigates how much the racial composition of communities influences the private school enrollment rates of members of different racial groups. Some scholars argue that private school enrollment contributes to racial segregation in public schools because White families attempt to enhance the social status of their children by leaving public schools serving communities with higher percentages of children who are Black. A second group of scholars argue that private school enrollment is primarily based on nonracial factors. A third, related perspective argues that race is of diminishing importance in driving behaviors such as school choice. This study explores these perspectives using 1990 and 2000 Public Use Micro Data Samples to estimate private school enrollment rates by student race and community racial composition. Findings indicate that private school enrollment rates among Asian, Black, and Hispanic students do not fluctuate much with community racial composition. By contrast, private school enrollment rates among White families are strongly and positively correlated with the percentage of children in their communities who are Black—even after holding constant a series of individual and community-level factors that may account for this trend. Moreover, the association between race and choice has changed little between 1990 and 2000.     

Teacher–student interactions in desegregated classrooms in South Africa

This study explored the state of desegregation and integration in South African schools 11 years after the demise of Apartheid. Three classrooms in three desegregating schools with different histories and race profiles were visited. Overall, each classroom was visited on 10 occasions over a period of 2 weeks. Direct observation was the main data gathering technique. The main findings were that desegregation as assimilation is occurring in these schools, but institutionalized racism is still pervasive. Manifestations of this at the classroom level include negative stereotyping of Black students, selective empathy, discriminatory seating arrangements, devolution of authority to students on racial basis, and aversion to African languages. The study concludes that the Constitution of South Africa is being given the most minimalist interpretation where racial desegregation is concerned. It concludes further that for system change to occur at school level, a radical shift from thinking about desegregation to contemplating substantive integration must be undertaken. Only in this way is it possible to introduce anti-racism as a transformative device into schools.     

Black Superintendents on Educating Black Students in Separate and Unequal Contexts

The negative consequences of school desegregation on Black families, educators, and communities in the US are well documented in education research today. The purpose of this article is to examine the experiential knowledge and wisdom of practice of former Black school superintendents who attended all Black segregated schools and led desegregated school districts. Using critical race theory as a methodological and analytical framework, I seek to advance our understanding of how the positive aspects of valued segregated schools can improve Black education today. Findings include Black superintendent reflections of and calls to action concerning separate and unequal schooling contexts according to the following constituencies: the Black community, the Black parent, the Black teacher, and the Black student. Building on the participant directives for political engagement and community-based activism, I conclude with a discussion about transforming Black education through a political race project aimed to resist educational inequities, advance racial justice, and promote social change in education.     

Segregation,Desegregation, Segregation: Charter School Options as a Return to Separate and Unequal Schools for Urban Families

The controversial glory of the Brown decisions and the retraction of court-ordered reforms represent the limited gains of racial justice in education and the protection of white privilege through law and policy. The return to segregation, as propagated through the rise of racially and economically segregated charter schools, exhibits the circuitous nature of law and education policy, represents a return to unequal schooling, and reveals the enduring and meaningful connections between race, law, and education. Using the lens of critical race theory, this paper focuses on law as an instrument of racial justice and oppression in education during the era of school desegregation and the inevitable return to separate and unequal schools for African American students through new education policies that promote the proliferation of charter schools in large urban school districts.     

Economic rationalism and the politics of education in Australia

Until the mid‐1970s, the politics of urban school desegregation concentrated almost exclusively on the attainment of some form of racial balance. The racial balance paradigm became the focal point for desegregation planners and for local, state and national dispute about ‘forced bussing’. However, in its 1977 Milliken II ruling, the Supreme Court added critical new elements to the urban school desegregation paradigm. By affirming a desegregation plan which included remedial education components in all‐minority schools, and which required state participation in financing these components, Milliken II heralded a new era of urban school desegregation. Resource issues and school effectiveness issues joined racial balance issues in the crucible of desegregation politics. In this chapter, the post‐Milliken politics of urban school desegregation are highlighted through examination of the St Louis and Kansas City cases. New goals, new issues, new alignments of interests and new political strategies are apparent, presenting new challenges to students of urban education policy and politics.     

From Brown to Ayers v. Fordice: the changing shape of racial desegregation in US higher education

Racial desegregation in higher education is taking on a new direction as the twenty‐first century approaches. The Brown v. Board of Education decision brought down legal racial barriers to segregated education, and this landmark US Supreme Court ruling was implicitly intended to apply to higher education as well. The positive changes for African Americans in removing racial barriers contributed significantly to the civil rights movement and opening avenues of opportunity. Yet, there has always been a fundamental tension between the removal of the vestiges of racial segregation to create equal educational opportunity, and the activist stance of addressing historical and current discriminatory educational policies. This is evident in the recent higher education desegregation and affirmative cases as the Federal Courts advocate the colour‐blind interpretation of higher education desegregation law and educational policy, while African Americans argue in favour of the enhancement of the public Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the explicit use of race as a form of diversity. This article examines the salient positions and racial identity politics surrounding this tension. I also argue that broader issues of racial control and power need to be addressed by educational institutions, the courts and the larger society in the debate about race, social justice and the removal of the vestiges of segregation.     

So It “Became White Activists Fighting for Integration?” Community Organizations,Intersectional Identities,and Education Reform

Community-based organizations have long influenced education reforms, and urban areas are especially vulnerable to community work that transcends racial and economic boundaries. The purpose of this study is to explore how The League of Women Voters of Las Vegas Valley, a mostly White, middle-upper-class women’s organization, worked to pursue one of the most prominent urban education reforms in the last half century—school desegregation. Using interview and archival data, this historical case study is theoretically framed by various critical constructs to examine how the organization’s racial and economic privileges, and in some cases oppression, coupled with gendered systems of patriarchy and misogyny, influenced the process and outcomes of school desegregation reform in Las Vegas between 1966 and 1972. The organization’s intersectional identities afforded them unique opportunities and barriers. Nevertheless, they ultimately compromised on an inequitable policy that burdened Black children and their families for close to 20 years. These findings suggest that the intersectional identities of organizations can both empower and hinder community engagement in education reform. Because interests often diverge, organizations undertaking education reform should do the collective work necessary to address unintended policy consequences of education reform efforts.     

Desegregation,Racial Conflict and Education for Democracy in the New South Africa: A Case Study of Institutional Change

Education under apartheid in South Africa was characterised by racism and segregation. Since the first democratic election in 1994 a process of racial desegregation has begun in South African schools. However, desegregation is not the same as integration. Given the historical context of South Africa, simply mixing students from different racial groups in one school is likely to result in racial conflict and violence unless the structure and processes of schooling are changed at the same time. This article examines the experience of one school in South Africa which has not only desegregated its intake but has also attempted to democratise its management structures in order to teach democratic values through experience and in particular to foster a climate of mutual respect among students so as to decrease racial distrust. So far, the changes appear to be successful but there are a number of important lessons to be learned.     

Difficult from the Start: Implementing the Brown Decision in the Kansas City,Missouri Public Schools

This article explores the history of school desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri. It examines the development of the school district's initial 1955 desegregation plan based on neighborhood schools, and the impact of that plan. Extensive analysis is devoted to the plan's shortcomings, particularly the provisions allowing students to transfer between schools and the manner in which massive demographic change in the city undermined school desegregation. Finally, the article explores the origins of busing for school desegregation in Kansas City during the early 1960s, the modifications made to the busing plan following protests by the city's civil rights organizations, and the subsequent court decisions that gave shape to the city's magnet schools desegregation plan.     

Cowan,Whiteness, Resistance to Brown,and the Persistence of the Past

In this paper, I examine the use of litigation as a strategic tool of resistance for thwarting school desegregation. Utilizing Cowan v. Bolivar County Board of Education as a case study, I argue that, despite losing the constitutional right to racially segregate public schools according to an explicit white supremacist doctrine, whites in Bolivar County, Mississippi, were successful in stemming the impending tide of social change associated with school desegregation through litigation. Litigious resistance not only provided southern whites with a racially moderate epistemology for undermining school desegregation regionally, but their legal challenges to school desegregation also laid the groundwork for non-southern white animus toward all federal education policies that promoted racial inclusion.     

"Because We Did More With Less": The Agency of African American Teachers in Franklin,Tennessee: 1890-1967

This article examines a conflict that arose in 2004 between a federal court's oversight of desegregation and the implementation of the public school choice provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act in Pinellas County, Florida. School system leaders challenged the statute on the grounds that it would likely disrupt a controlled-choice plan designed to achieve racial balance as part of a court settlement to its desegregation case. The judge ruled that no changes could be made to the prior court order mandating these balances through 2008. Drawing on interviews with the county school superintendent and school board attorney, the author describes the county's decision to seek the judge's protection and analyzes several attendant conflicts. These include the legal conflict between two federal mandates, desegregation and school choice; the political tension arising between local and federal officials resulting from the changing nature of federal authority with respect to desegregation; and the policy-related conflict between test-based accountability and desegregation in southern school systems.     

Introduction

On July 9, 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued its landmark school desegregation decision, Sheff v. O'Neill. More than a decade later, Hartford's schoolchildren are as segregated as they were when the case was first filed in 1989. Based on data from a statewide survey and data collected from two focus groups of white parents collected shortly after the State's High Court ruling, this investigation reveals that the racial attitudes of white parents were, from the beginning, a major obstacle to a successful resolution of the Sheff impasse.     

“Doing the Best We Could”: African American Teachers’ Counterstory on School Desegregation

National narratives on the movement to desegregate Southern schools, as construed by dominant cultural forces, focus on school desegregation from the vantage point of dominant culture; portraying school desegregation as a singular and inevitable event emanating from jurisprudence and principles of democracy, with little attention to the complexities of those most impacted. This article argues the importance of including counterstory to such narratives, specifically highlighting the narratives of African American teachers. Using qualitative methods, the study this article demonstrates how African American teachers’ personal narratives of school desegregation provide a window into the complexities of school desegregation illuminating the ways in which race, social class standing, gender, and personal relationships compounded individual support, views, resistance, and participation in the movement to desegregate Southern schools.Jeannine E. Dingus in an Assistant Professor of Margaret Warner School of Education and Human Development in University of Rochester.     

The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance,Growth Liberalism,and the Interpretation of Brown II

ABSTRACT

The United States Congress’ Southern Congressional Delegation promulgated the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, popularly known as the Southern Manifesto, on March 12, 1956. The Southern Manifesto was the South’s primary means to effectively delay implementation of public school desegregation as ordered by the United States Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas (1954; as cited in Day, 2014). This essay places the desegregation of American public school system within the larger context of the time period in which it transpired, and explains how racial disparity in public education was perpetuated after the Jim Crow caste system was dismantled in the 1960s. Ironically, while de jure desegregation of American public schools was effectively accomplished by the early 1970s under the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, government spending during the era after World War II, perpetuated racial and economic disparity in America’s public schools that prevails up to the present day.     

The impact of culture contact and desegregation on the whites of an urban high school

Conclusion Desegregation has generally been presented as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement and as an attempt to redress the educational disadvantages blacks have suffered as the result of a racial imbalance. Given the general theoretical considerations of resource allocation, the assumption has been that reallocations of resources to blacks would necessarily mean reallocation of these resources to blacks from whites. This view is also part of the popular culture where the process of desegregation has caused turmoil and disturbance among whites based, manifestedly at least, on the notion that improving educational benefits for blacks necessarily means a reduction in the same benefits for whites.Based on an analysis of the experiences of teachers and students at one polyethnic inner-city high school, we suggest that not only have whites at this school not been disadvantaged by the desegregation process but that there is evidence indicating that there have been more advantages for whites than for blacks. What, then, are the advantages of desegregation for whites, both students and teachers? In this school it was found that the advantages differed for white students and for white teachers, with white students experiencing more positive outcomes than white teachers experienced.     

The Desegregation Aims and Demographic Contexts of Magnet Schools: How Parents Choose and Why Siting Policies Matter

This paper is designed to specify a set of new opportunities for educators, school administrators, and scholars to realize the practical aims and strategic advantages envisioned in magnet schools. The paper is divided into three distinct sections. In Section I, we examine the extensive research literature on parents’ choice patterns and school preferences in magnet schools and other school-choice programs. In Section II, we compare the reasons parents choose particular schools with the criteria school districts use to select magnet school locations (and themes). This section highlights desegregation goals and district-level magnet school policies pegged to the following questions: What is the policy context for siting decisions in districts with magnet schools? Are siting policies strategically aligned with what is known from the research literature about parents’ school preferences? Do neighborhood characteristics play a part in magnet school siting policies and specific decision-making? In Section III, we use geographic information system (GIS) tools to add both clarity and complexity to the convergence of parent choice patterns and sociodemographic diversity in our four selected school districts. The maps depict the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of the magnet schools in each district, as well as the demographic characteristics of surrounding census tracts (extended school neighborhoods). We conclude that GIS can be a viable option for improving the citing decisions for magnet schools, and that this can allow for the merging of parent choice priorities with educational equity and diversity goals of the district.     

Relations between colorblind socialization and children's racial bias: evidence from European American mothers and their preschool children

To examine European American parents’ racial socialization, mothers (n = 84) were videotaped while reading 2 race‐themed books to their 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children and completed surveys concerning their racial attitudes and behaviors. Children completed measures of their racial attitudes and both groups (mothers and preschoolers) predicted the others’ racial attitudes. Results indicated that nearly all mothers adopted “colormute” and “colorblind” approaches to socialization. Furthermore, neither children nor mothers accurately predicted the others’ views. Children’s racial attitudes were unrelated to their mothers’ attitudes but were predicted by their mothers’ cross‐race friendships; those children whose mothers had a higher percentage of non‐European American friends showed lower levels of racial biases than those children whose mothers had a lower percentage of non‐European American friends.