Urban Education

Why - in spite of early optimism that racial transition among teachers, administrators, and policymakers would set the stage for urban education reform truly responsive to the needs of inner-city minorities - is there so little evidence of broad, sustained school reform in black-led cities? In this book, we trace the relationships among demographic change, political change, and education in four cities - Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and the District of Columbia - where the levers of the formal institutions of local governance have passed into the hands of African-American officials. Blacks became a majority of the population during the 1950s in the District of Columbia and by the 1970s in the other three cities. By the mid-1970s, black mayors had been elected in Atlanta, Detroit, and the District.

While focusing on race and black-led cities, we also are interested in a broader question that transcends particular groups and settings: Why is meaningful school reform so elusive? Americans claim to care deeply about the quality of education their children receive, and the need for systemic school reform has had a prominent place on the agendas of elected leaders at least since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. Why have we failed to make more progress? Our research on racial politics within black-led cities developed in the context of a larger project on Civic Capacity and Urban Education in eleven central-city school districts. These districts, which we will use for comparative purposes throughout, vary in demographic patterns, population trends, formal institutions, and informal political style. Four of these districts (Pittsburgh, Denver, Boston, and St. Louis) were predominantly white in population at the last U.S. census. Four (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Denver) had large proportions of Hispanic and Asian residents (25% or higher). But in spite of their differences, these eleven districts share many similar problems in undertaking school reform.

Race complicates this process of coalition building because of the ways in which it is tied to differences in political experience, perception, and trust. Racial transition in power does not provide the solution because cross-race alliances are necessary even in cities in which the levers of local authority are firmly in the hands of black leaders. Daunting though it may be, the challenge of improving education in America's central cities is too important to sidestep, and we finish with some guidance about how those who care about the quality of urban education can better take into account both politics and race in their efforts to bring about sustainable school reform.

Many urban education problems black-led cities face are similar to those in other central cities, but race sometimes seriously complicates efforts to build coalitions for significant, sustained educational reform. In spite of theoretical arguments that black leaders, local corporations, and concerned parents share strong objective interests that should be propelling them toward a shared agenda, our research in Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., reveals repeated instances in which the prospects for collaboration unravel in the face of mutual suspicion, loaded rhetoric, and political symbolism, all weighted by race.

A second source of the failure of educational reform in our four cities is rooted in the inability of specific reforms to bring about the dramatic effects predicted by their more ardent supporters. Sometimes this perceived failure is a function of unrealistic expectations. For example, it is certain that no "silver bullet" will reclaim urban education. Improving urban education requires attention to a wide range of issues. Thus, any reform effort will be abeled a failure if the evaluation standard demands a complete transformation of the school system.