Class Action; Community Mobilization, Race, and the Politics of Student Assignment in San Francisco


Book Description

The principal goal of the dissertation is to explain the political nature and effect of cultural characterizations on the development of student assignment policy. Cultural characterizations are socially constructed portrayals that become influential when stakeholders mobilize to bring about change. In education, as the professional authority of school boards and superintendents diminishes, community stakeholders are increasingly prominent. They serve as critical producers and providers of cultural characterizations of public education and its beneficiaries. As such, the engagement of community stakeholders with public sector institutions, organizations, and individuals can significantly amplify, modify, or blunt education policy. The dissertation traces the history of community mobilization in San Francisco from 1971 to 2005, during which the federal district court supervised all aspects of the school district's student assignment policy. Cultural characterizations of student assignment were structured by three distinct logics of action: integration, choice, and neighborhood. These logics were stable but not fixed. Changes in the institutional environment coupled with how stakeholders framed, understood, and shaped these logics led to transformations in student assignment policy that ultimately altered the educational experience of multiple generations of public school students. Data are drawn primarily from archival documents from the federal district court, the school district, and community organizations; mainstream and community newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and editorials; and, retrospective interviews with key stakeholders.




School Resegregation


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Confronting a reality that many policy makers would prefer to ignore, contributors to this volume offer the latest information on the trend toward the racial and socioeconomic resegregation of southern schools. In the region that has achieved more widespread public school integration than any other since 1970, resegregation, combined with resource inequities and the current "accountability movement," is now bringing public education in the South to a critical crossroads. In thirteen essays, leading thinkers in the field of race and public education present not only the latest data and statistics on the trend toward resegregation but also legal and policy analysis of why these trends are accelerating, how they are harmful, and what can be done to counter them. What's at stake is the quality of education available to both white and nonwhite students, they argue. This volume will help educators, policy makers, and concerned citizens begin a much-needed dialogue about how America can best educate its increasingly multiethnic student population in the twenty-first century. Contributors: Karen E. Banks, Wake County Public School System, Raleigh, N.C. John Charles Boger, University of North Carolina School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky, Duke Law School Charles T. Clotfelter, Duke University Susan Leigh Flinspach, University of California, Santa Cruz Erica Frankenberg, Harvard Graduate School of Education Catherine E. Freeman, U.S. Department of Education Jay P. Heubert, Teachers College, Columbia University Jennifer Jellison Holme, University of California, Los Angeles Michal Kurlaender, Harvard Graduate School of Education Helen F. Ladd, Duke University Luis M. Laosa, Kingston, N.J. Jacinta S. Ma, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Gary Orfield, Harvard Graduate School of Education Gregory J. Palardy, University of Georgia john a. powell, Ohio State University Sean F. Reardon, Stanford University Russell W. Rumberger, University of California, Santa Barbara Benjamin Scafidi, Georgia State University David L. Sjoquist, Georgia State University Jacob L. Vigdor, Duke University Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University John T. Yun, University of California, Santa Barbara




Hearings


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La Gente


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La Gente traces the rise of the Chicana/o Movement in Sacramento and the role of everyday people in galvanizing a collective to seek lasting and transformative change during the 1960s and 1970s. In their efforts to be self-determined, la gente contested multiple forms of oppression at school, at work sites, and in their communities. Though diverse in their cultural and generational backgrounds, la gente were constantly negotiating acts of resistance, especially when their lives, the lives of their children, their livelihoods, or their households were at risk. Historian Lorena V. Márquez documents early community interventions to challenge the prevailing notions of desegregation by barrio residents, providing a look at one of the first cases of outright resistance to desegregation efforts by ethnic Mexicans. She also shares the story of workers in the Sacramento area who initiated and won the first legal victory against canneries for discriminating against brown and black workers and women, and demonstrates how the community crossed ethnic barriers when it established the first accredited Chicana/o and Native American community college in the nation. Márquez shows that the Chicana/o Movement was not solely limited to a handful of organizations or charismatic leaders. Rather, it encouraged those that were the most marginalized—the working poor, immigrants and/or the undocumented, and the undereducated—to fight for their rights on the premise that they too were contributing and deserving members of society.







Mexican American Education Study


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Education of the Spanish Speaking


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Education of the Spanish Speaking


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The Elements of Public Policy


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