The promise of a free, high-quality public education is supposed to guarantee every child a shot at the American dream. But our widely segregated schools mean that many children of color do not have access to educational opportunities equal to those of their white peers. In "Integrations," historian Zoë Burkholder and philosopher…

In cities across the United States, affluent White newcomers are moving into historically Black neighborhoods, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for public schools. In many cases, the newcomers either avoid their local schools or use their political power to push aside families who have lived in the neighborhood for years. But there's…

Many American schools continue to struggle with segregation. This important book tells the story of how two school districts--one a predominantly White and wealthy suburban community and the other a more diverse and urbanized community--were merged into a single district to work toward a solution for school segregation. The authors focus on the…

An all-too-popular explanation for why black students aren't doing better in school is their own use of the "acting white" slur to ridicule fellow blacks for taking advanced classes, doing schoolwork, and striving to earn high grades. Carefully reconsidering how and why black students have come to equate school success with whiteness,…

In the summer of 1970, the members of the New Orleans Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals understood clearly the realities of race in the South. Houston, Texas, like other Southern cities, had made haste toward racial school desegregation as slowly as the White Southern Federal courts would allow. When the High School of Performing and Visual Arts…

Eick explores the history of a comprehensive high school from the world views of its assorted student body, confronting issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality, and religion. Her case study examines the continuities and differences in student relationships over five decades. While she discusses the "dark side" of the high school…

This book takes a critical and detailed look at the young generation in post-Apartheid South Africa and examines ways in which members of the group relate to and engage with the post-Apartheid process of social and political reconciliation. To investigate whether and to what extent such processes are in fact taking place, Tihanyi focuses on the…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…

The six studies collected in this book analyze the day-to-day realities of life in desegregated classrooms. The sites reported on range from New York to Memphis, and from the industrial Northeast to the Midwest and Deep South. They also vary by organization (elementary, middle, and high school), by the black-white ratio among students and faculty,…

This book concentrates on the experiences, personal insights, and big events that made up the battle to desegregate the public schools in Boston, Massachusetts. It also gives the historical background of the struggle. In 1965, Massachusetts passed the first state law against de facto segregation, the Racial Imbalance Act. It was not enforced. On…

This study originated in 1968, when desegregation was being carried out mainly on a one-way basis, by busing minority pupils to predominantly white schools. Two of the districts studied, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Providence, Rhode Island, were then groping their way toward racial balance, primarily because of local pressures, and both had…

Stories of school desegregation are ultimately about people--teachers who work in the schools and the students who are there to learn. This book focuses on the front line teachers and their recollections of the effort to desegregate faculty in the Austin (TX) Independent School District during 1964-1971 in compliance with the "Brown v. Board…

This book is of the opinion that school reform does not reform schools. The reason is that reform movements conceptualize schools as transmitters of knowledge. The book asserts that, rather, schools are involved in the construction of meaning and morality in the lives of students and communities. Successful reform must, therefore, be based on an…

After presenting an overview of metropolitan schools, described as not successful in providing an adequate education for economically disadvantaged students, the authors examine four critical issues: compensatory education, educational accountability, decentralization and community control, and desegregation. While compensatory education has not…

Even though transportation of school children was long accepted by the public prior to the conflict over school integration, the school bus became a symbol representing the divergent emotions of both the integrationists and the supporters of "neighborhood schools." Busing was used as a means of overcoming the resistance and procrastination of…