When Morris Dees was a young man in Alabama, the law said that black people couldn't drink from the same water fountain as white people, or sit at the same lunch counter. Back then, the government created and sanctioned divisions between human beings. The Civil Rights Movement changed all of that, of course, and ended state-mandated apartheid in…

In this review essay, Harvey Kantor and Robert Lowe explore the history of the culture wars in public education in the United States. Drawing on three books--David Tyack's "Seeking Common Ground," Jonathan Zimmerman's "Whose America?" and Amy Binder's "Contentious Curricula"--Kantor and Lowe review the history of…

Although the systems of public schools differ among Australia, South Africa and the USA, all three countries recognize that religion plays a significant role in determining values. All three countries have written constitutions but only South Africa and the USA have a Bill of Rights that protects persons' exercise of religious beliefs. In…

Background/Context: The educational fate of the children of low-wage immigrants is a salient issue in all the economically developed societies that have received major immigration flows since the 1950s. The article considers the way in which educational systems in the two countries structure the educational experiences and shape the opportunities…

This highly acclaimed volume in the "Defending Public Schools" series is now available in paperback from Teachers College Press. It is a practical, necessary addition to the work of administrators, teachers, policymakers, and parents as they negotiate the difficult path of how to best teach and educate today's children and youth. This…

This article uses the metaphor of the achievement gap to make transparent, discuss, and critique the analytical frame/lens used in the articles to analyze urban education. Doing such an analysis is essential to producing an additional lens that has utility in theory and practice. It facilitates a historical analysis of urban education and leads to…

A number of public school districts in the United States have adopted income-based integration policies--policies that use measures of family income or socioeconomic status--in determining school assignment. Some scholars and policymakers contend that such policies will also reduce racial segregation. In this article this assumption is explored by…

Makes several methodological points to bear on a previously written article on residential segregation. Notes that although the conclusions given in the original article may be statements of fact, they do not follow as inevitably from the data as the article suggests. (Author/AM)

Commemorating and reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education," this article reexamines their impact on school desegregation efforts. Specifically, this article traces the history of the Supreme Court's rulings in cases focused on outlining and clarifying the proper implementation of…

This study examines how charter school advocates and district administrators in a suburban US school district work in concert, although not in unison, to create a public charter school that reinforces the interests of White, economically advantaged families. Drawing on ethnographic data, interviews, census data and charter school documents, we…

Fifty years ago, on 17 May 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled in "Brown v. Board of Education" that the "separate but equal" doctrine that had effectively legalized "educational apartheid" some 58 years earlier deprived racially segregated children of the equal protection of laws guaranteed by the fourteenth…

The story of Brown is compelling. Blacks and Whites alike understood that the Jim Crow system of "separate but equal" was a convenient fiction. There was no actual effort to ensure that Whites and Blacks were provided the same services. Invariably, the White schools had higher funding, better buildings, newer supplies and so on. Indeed,…

American schools, resegregating gradually for almost two decades, are now experiencing accelerating isolation and this will doubtless be intensified by the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2007, the Supreme Court handed down its first major decision on school desegregation in 12 years in the Louisville and Seattle cases. A…

The parallels between South Africa and the United States run deep. For the United States, that moment of transition, at least as far as education is concerned, was the landmark ruling of 1954, described in the shorthand, "Brown v. Board of Education"; for South Africa, that moment came 40 years later when every citizen could, for the…

This examination of black/white relations in the United States describes the aftereffects of slavery, and explores black identity, communication, and values. The book also discusses dealing effectively and honestly across races. The chapters are: (1) "Traditional African American Culture"; (2) "Search for Identity: A Dream…