Schools in the U.S. are faced with a complex set of barriers that limit their ability to provide equitable and meaningful education to students, such as reduced funding levels, increased concentrations of high-needs students, and institutionalized forms of oppression. However, research suggests that school leaders can spearhead efforts to overcome…

Across Canada, school districts have been confronting a backlash to their equity and social justice initiatives. Critics of public education have been arguing that the solution to these controversies is to increase school choice. Using several examples from the United States, this paper argues that the endgame of these strategies is to undermine…

This research examines social justice leaders' community activism in response to three local and national political contexts. Grounded in literature that advances ecological models of school leadership, we analyzed how seven urban school leaders conceptualized community activism as linked to school outcomes, and how leaders conducted activism…

Background/Context: In "Milliken v. Bradley" (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a metropolitan-wide desegregation plan in Detroit that sought to achieve racial balance in part by busing white suburban students to the city's majority black schools. In a stark departure from "Brown v. Board of Education of…

This article examines parent engagement in a Los Angeles portfolio district reform. Based on data from a 3-year study, we use the lens of democratic theory to examine the design and implementation of mechanisms seeking parent input in the selection of plans to operate low-performing and new schools. We find that despite significant efforts to move…

This Issue Brief states that, in spite of the obvious "reciprocal relationship" between housing and school policy, government housing and education agencies have rarely collaborated to promote the common goals of racial and economic integration. Recent efforts to promote collaboration among housing and school agencies have focused on…

This paper examines increasing privatisation of education in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Conceptually, the paper is informed by theories of privatisation and social justice; and methodologically, it uses policy analysis to examine documents and financial records obtained from government departments. The paper critically analyses…

Purpose: In this essay, we examine the racial politics of education in the six decades after "Brown". We consider the state of educational policy in an era in which market reform advocates often invoke the spirit of the "Brown" decision even as the Supreme Court has largely vacated the legal framework provided by…

Changes to Title IX allowing the growth of single-sex schools have garnered media attention promoting the benefits of separating boys and girls. Alternately, civil rights groups such as the ACLU continue to oppose any type of school segregation. Within this context, a private philanthropy, the Foundation for the Education of Young Women (FEYW) has…

While political philosophers have paid a great deal of attention to providing a theory of secession for cases of nations breaking away from nation-states, little has been said about perhaps the most common type of secession--school district secession. I argue that while there is no principled prohibition against school district secession, there…

The authors attempt to tell the story of "Brown" and "Parents Involved" on educational inequality and connect these topics to economic competition globally. "Brown" came about in the 1950s in a much different environment: America was less diverse racially and ethnically, and economic competition on a global scale was…