Unregulated Open Enrollment and Inequitable Access to Schools of Choice

ABSTRACT

In severing the link between residential address and school assignment, school choice policies have the potential to decrease school segregation and increase educational equity. Yet this promise is undermined when school choice creates greater opportunity for those who are already privileged while limiting access to students from historically marginalized groups. This study combines data from a new survey of local open enrollment policies in Metro Detroit, student-level administrative records, and geographic data to critically analyze the local discretion provided in Michigan’s interdistrict school choice policy in relation to the goals of access to schools of choice, desegregation, and educational equity. I found that local school districts implement provisions of state policy in ways that restrict access to Black and economically disadvantaged students while creating pathways of opportunity for others. Districts are incentivized to implement these restrictions because of the inequities built into the state school funding formula and the racialized geography of Metro Detroit that is mechanized in district and county boundaries to restrict access. This study has implications for the regulation of local school choice markets and the role they play in increasing equitable public school opportunities.     

The Forgotten Brown Case: Briggs v. Elliott and Its Legacy in South Carolina

ABSTRACT

There is not much debate regarding the Brown decision and the significance of the foundation it provided for access to equal educational opportunity and the school funding litigation movement; however, it is important to recognize that the inception of Brown can be traced back to a small rural town in South Carolina. Three years before the Supreme Court heard Brown v. Board, the legal strategy to attack separate but equal was formed in Summerton, South Carolina, with Briggs v. Elliott. Briggs was the first school funding lawsuit in South Carolina. More than 65 years after the first school funding lawsuit was filed in the state of South Carolina, rural school districts are still waiting for the state to provide adequate educational opportunity for poor, rural, mostly Black students. The schools in these districts are arguably still segregated, still unequal, and still inadequate. The purpose of this article is to examine the history and legacy of Briggs v. Elliot. The article begins with exploring the historical legal background of education finance litigation in South Carolina. This is followed by a snapshot of the prevalence of school segregation and educational inadequacies of the rural school districts represented in Briggs and recent lawsuits. Furthermore, the article discusses the role and function of the courts regarding South Carolina education, in addition to enacted legislation and the role of race. The article concludes with implications regarding policy and potential future legal strategies.     

Creating Educational Destruction: A Critical Exploration of Central Neoliberal Concepts and Their Transformative Effects on Public Education

Individualism and competition are central neoliberal concepts that have profoundly altered the U.S. public education system. This article draws on poststructuralist theory and advances the argument that these concepts have produced problematic policies and deeply flawed school choice mechanisms such as charter schools and school vouchers. I also explore how educational activists contested neoliberal ideology and reshaped reality as they defeated a neoliberal education policy in North Carolina.     

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.     

Educational Equity Policies and the Centralization of American Public Education: The Case of Bilingual Education

Sixty years ago, federal guidelines regarding the instruction of special populations in American public schools were nonexistent. Racial minorities, language minorities, women, the poor, and those with physical and mental disabilities had not been identified as groups that needed special protections. Much has changed since then. Federal legislation that is designed to ensure that all of these groups have access to equal educational opportunities in the United States is now in place. This article examines the evolution of policies surrounding bilingual education to illustrate that the need to ensure the educational opportunities of certain student populations compelled the federal government to become more involved in the governance and oversight of American public education. The implementation of such federal “protection policies” designed to expand educational opportunities for traditionally underserved groups of students ultimately fortified and solidified the federal government's more pronounced role in public education.     

An Explanation for School Failure: Moving Beyond Black Inferiority and Alienation as a Policy-Making Agenda

Numerous authors identify a white supremacist ideology that shapes the educational opportunities for racially diverse students. We contend that this ideology informs educational policy and hampers the likelihood that racially diverse populations can achieve success at levels similar to students of European descent. In this paper we define the white supremacist ideology as it informs education policy and practices. Three examples from the United States are then used to illustrate the influence of such an ideology. These examples include the creation and protection of racially segregated schooling; desegregation policies; and the current uses of school report cards. We conclude with the relevance of this discussion to educational debates in Great Britain and South Africa, and recommendations to minimise the influence of this ideology on education policy and school reform efforts.     

A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

Legal Regulation and Professional Discretion in Schools

ABSTRACT

The paper aims to analyse how pupils’ equal educational opportunities are warranted. We focus on how regulations of adapted education and the right to special needs education provide school leaders’ and teachers’ room for discretionary decision-making, how it is interpreted and how discretionary power is justified. The paper draws on findings from an interdisciplinary study (education and law) on the transformation of legal standards into professional actions in schools. This paper employs interview data from three compulsory schools (grades 1–10), legal documents, and public reports, and the analysis is guided by a conceptual distinction between structural and epistemic aspects of discretion. Based on our findings, we question whether the discretionary space regarding special needs education gives too many opportunities for action and, hence, weakens pupils’ legal rights. Under the guise of a common school, there is a risk that pupils’ special needs are made invisible.     

"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.     

When Opting Out is Not a Choice: Implications for NCLB's Transfer Option from Charlotte,North Carolina

A key provision of No Child Left Behind is the opportunity for students to transfer from a low-performing school to a high-performing one. Drawing from a case study of school reform in Charlotte, North Carolina, this article examines the implementation and early outcomes of NCLB's voluntary transfer option for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) district. For the 2004–05 school year, fully 92% of the eligible families did not exercise their choice to exit from their low-performing schools. The experiences of CMS illustrate how larger social, economic, and political contexts constrain the implementation of standards-based reforms like NCLB in general and, in particular, the limitations of the transfer option for improving academic achievement and educational equity.     

Blurring Public and Private: The Pragmatic Desegregation Politics of an Elite Private School in Atlanta

The school desegregation narrative often references historically white public schools as sites of massive resistance and historically white private schools as segregationist academies. Yet some historically white elite private schools or independent schools, such as The Westminster Schools (plural in name only), established in 1951 in Atlanta, Georgia, chose to desegregate. Such elite institutions, which have served as one catalyst for the creation and maintenance of social and cultural capital, became more accessible after Brown v. Board of Education through a combination of private and public decisions galvanized by larger social, political, and federal forces. Westminster's 1965 decision to consider all applicants regardless of race was emblematic of the pragmatic desegregation politics of Atlanta's city leaders during the civil rights movement and a national independent school agenda focused on recruiting black students. Drawing on institutional, local, regional, and national archival records and publications, this article examines the import of schools like Westminster to civic and business leaders, to the politics of race and desegregation occurring in large cities, and to the range of educational opportunities available in metropolitan areas. This examination yields an analysis of the leadership and politics of a southern historically white elite private school that black students desegregated in 1967.     

Desegregation Decrees versus the NCLB Choice Provision

ABSTRACT

Despite the creeping resegregation of public schools, recent court decisions have been involved in the lifting of court-ordered desegregation decrees, which could arguably cause further segregation. When dismissing desegregation decrees, lower courts have relied on three U.S. Supreme Court decisions during the 1990s that permitted a lower standard for lifting desegregation decrees. Those school districts that remain under court-ordered desegregation decrees may find themselves in conflict with the No Child Left Behind Act's (NCLB) choice provision. Specifically, NCLB permits parents to transfer their children to another school if their present school is deemed in need of improvement. Such NCLB regulations may permit school districts to bypass the desegregation decree. In so doing, there is a conflict between a federal regulation and federal court order.

Employing legal research techniques (e.g., case and statutory analysis), this paper explores the Supreme Court's jurisprudence for declaring a school district unitary, analyzes the conflict between court-ordered desegregation decrees and NCLB's choice provision, and discusses the potential litigation that could result from the conflict between NCLB and desegregation decrees. doi:10.1300/J467v01n03_08     

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.     

民办教育地方政策制定的价值追求

基于教育平等、满足教育需求、促进教育改革、提高教育投入效益、科学分享管理权力等方面的分析,制定民办教育政策要努力争取落实民办学校、学生、教师与公办学校、学生、教师的平等法律地位;创造条件吸引社会资源进入教育领域,增加可供选择的多样化优质教育资源的供应量;落实民办学校办学自主权,促进教育体制机制和育人模式的创新;发挥公共财政对民办教育的激励作用,提高财政投入教育的产出水平;落实分级负责,多部门共同承担优化民办教育发展环境和规范民办学校办学行为的职责。     

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.     

The role of high school racial composition and opportunities to learn in students' STEM college participation

We analyze longitudinal data from students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina (NC) public secondary schools and attended NC public universities to investigate the importance of high school racial composition and opportunities to learn in secondary school for choosing a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major. We consider school racial composition and opportunities to learn as contexts that shape students' decisions regarding college majors. Results of cross‐classified hierarchical logistic models indicate that attending schools with predominantly White students is negatively associated with declaring a STEM major and with graduating with a STEM major irrespective of students' own race. The finding suggests that for students in North Carolina, attending racially isolated White high schools is related to a decrease in adolescents' participation in STEM during college.     

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.     

Never Again: The Impact of Learning About the Holocaust on Civic Outcomes

Abstract

Preparing students to be effective citizens is a longstanding goal of public education. Historical content provides illustrative opportunities for civic learning. Teaching about the Holocaust exemplifies this approach. Employing an experimental research design with 865 secondary school students, we analyze effects on civic outcomes from learning about the Holocaust through a school-sponsored trip to a Holocaust museum. We find that lessons about the Holocaust increase students’ support for civil liberties and deepen historical content knowledge, but decrease religious tolerance. High school students and those from college-educated households drive increases in support for civil liberties, and these students are more likely to donate to human rights causes as a result of the intervention. Middle school students and those from less-educated households drive the negative religious tolerance effect. These findings suggest that history lessons can produce meaningful impacts on civic educational outcomes. However, a stronger educational foundation that comes with engaging with challenging political issues may be a vital prerequisite to avoid undesirable consequences.     

Does desegregation matter? A comparative study of school-based social capital for university-bound minority students in segregated and desegregated school contexts of Hong Kong

Despite national policies, de facto school segregation for racial/ethnic minority students in the West and East has continued to deepen. In Hong Kong, the segregated school system was abolished in 2013, while from 2004 reformed School Places Allocation Systems encouraged minority students to choose mainstream primary and secondary schools. However, de facto ethnicity-based school segregation continues to prevail. Most minority students in the mainstream system are stuck in low-status schools where they face discrimination and institutional exclusion. This has led many of them to retreat to a limited number of schools that have traditionally catered for minority communities. Such segregation calls forth scholarly attention to the paradoxical correlation between the physical mixing of diverse students and equality of educational opportunity, especially equal access to post-secondary education (PSE)—a key for minority youth to function in the competitive labour market. This study employed the theory of school-based social capital (SBSC) and compared the ways in which PSE-relevant institutional resources and support were rationalised and enacted by staff in de facto segregated and desegregated school contexts. Case studies of two secondary schools lead us to argue that desegregation is only effective when institutional structure, culture and agents empower minority students through access to instrumental resources and support for the pursuit of PSE. The findings confound the desegregation policy and call for structural/institutional interventions to ensure instrumental SBSC is accessible to PSE-bound minority students in all schools, and thus increase the effectiveness of school desegregation.     

从择校制度看美国基础教育改革的教育公平

在近期美国联邦教育计划中，择校制度已成为基础教育改革中引人注目的话题。美国的择校制度，旨在改革传统公立教育的体制和管理方式，从过去的“科层行政管理模式”转化为“经济市场调节模式”，从而打破公立学校的垄断局面，为广大家长和学生提供更多的自由选择权利，以最终达到提高教育效益与教育质量，实现教育公平的目的。