Challenges of Urban Education and Efficacy of School Reform (Advances in Educational Administration)

334 Pages·2002·18.72 MB·English

by  Richard C Hunter

ADVANCES IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME 6
CHALLENGES OF
URBAN EDUCATION
AND EFFICACY OF
SCHOOL REFORM
EDITED BY
RICHARD C. HUNTER
College of Education, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, ASU
FRANK BROWN
School of Education, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, ASU
2003
JAI
An Imprint of Elsevier Science
Amsterdam - Boston - London - New York - Oxford - Paris
San Diego - San Francisco - Singapore - Sydney - Tokyo
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kern Alexander joined the Department of Educational Organization and
Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the spring of
2002. He is the most recent past president of Murray State University. He also
served as the seventh president of Western Kentucky University and a faculty
member at the University of Florida at Gainesville and Virginia Polytechnic
Institute. Dr. Alexander has conducted educational research in various areas
including education finance and law. He earned his Ph.D. from Indiana
University.
Frank Brown is the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Education and former dean
of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He has published numerous articles and books in the areas of school law, policy
studies, minority education, and educational administration. He is also an active
participant in the American Educational Research Association and National
Organization for Legal problems on Education, and he serves on the editorial
boards of several acadeinic journals.
A. Reynaldo Contreras is Professor of Administrative and Interdisciplinary
Studies (DAIS) in the College of Education at San Francisco State University.
Formerly he was department chair at San Francisco State University and
Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University,
Bloomington. Professor Contreras received his Doctor of Philosophy degree
from Stanford University where he studied administration and policy analysis.
His research interests include policy research in education, minority educational
leadership, and education in emerging metropolitan contexts. Currently he is
conducting research on home-school partnerships and in the transformation of
urban education. He has contributed to journals and books on urban education
and educational leadership and continues to serve on editorial boards of profes-
sional publications in education.
Philip T. K. Daniel is a professor of education and law at The Ohio State
University who has been teaching in postsecondary education for over 28 years.
In 1993, he received The Ohio State UniversityA lumni Award for Distinguished
xi
xii ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Teaching and was inducted into The Ohio State University Academy of
Distinguished Teaching. He received his B.S. from Cheyney University
of Pennsylvania, M.S. and Ed.D. from the University of Illinois, and J.D. from
Northern Illinois University. His primary research area is education law with
special attention to discrimination and equal protection, students with disabili-
ties, health and safety, gifted education, Internet regulation, and church-state
issues.
Saran Douahoo is a doctoral student in Higher Education Administration at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her B.A. in
secondary education at the University of Arizona and her M.A. in history at
the University of Illinois. She has also served as a teacher in a charter school.
In addition, she has also authored and co-authored articles on various public
education issues including charter schools, homeschooling, privatization and
vouchers. Her current research interests include the history of higher education,
women and minorities in higher education, curriculum and assessment, and
transitions between higher education and secondary schools.
Paul Green is an Assistant Professor of Educational Politics, Policy and Law
at the University of California's Washington Center in Washington, D.C. His
area' s of expertise include the politics, policies and practices of decision making
at the federal, state and local levels, which either impede of advance access
and opportunity for poor students and students of color in elementary, secon-
dary and post-secondary institutions.
Richard C. Hunter joined the Educational Organization and Leadership
Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as both faculty
and department head in 2000. Formerly chair and faculty member in Educational
Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he has also served
in the public schools of America as a teacher, assistant principal, assistant coor-
dinator, compensatory education consultant, principal, assistant superintendent,
associate superintendent, and superintendent.
Ji-Yeon O. Jo is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She taught Korean language to college students
and adults. She is currently serving as an assistant principal at the Chapel Hill-
Durham Korean language school. Her academic interests are on the issues of
heritage language retention and attrition, identity of language minority students,
and language policies and politics in education.
About the Authors xiii
nehpetS B. Lawton, Ph.D. Full Professor and Chair, Department of Education
Administration and Community Leadership, Central Michigan University, and
Professor Emeritus, Department of Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. School finance, economics, and
policy with a current emphasis on school choice, comparative education finance,
and school system structures at the national, state/province, and local levels
(including schools) and their link to educational effectiveness. Current and
recent articles focus on Arizona school finance, school choice in Canada
and the U.S., information systems in education, and administrative roles of state
education agencies.
Arthur E. Lehr is currently a visiting assistant professor the Department of
Educational Organization and Leadership and AT&T Technology Fellow at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former secondary and gifted
education teacher, his research interests include student placement, school
administration, curriculum, and collaborative instruction.
nehpetS Earl Lucas is an assistant professor of educational administration at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches instructional
supervision, the political-social context of schools, and research methods. A
former California middle school teacher and administrator, he conducts research
on middle school principals, collaborative administrator-teacher leadership, and
the relationship between transformational leadership and school culture.
James E. Lyons is Professor of Educational Administration in the Department
of Educational Administration, Research, and Technology at the University of
North Carolina at Charlotte. Previously, he served as a high school teacher,
principal, a school management consultant with the Ohio Department of
Education, and university department chairperson for fifteen years. His research
interests include the principalship, the superintendency, human resources devel-
opment and administration, and organizational development. Articles presenting
his research have been published in The Journal of School Leadership,
Education and Urban Society, The Journal of Cases in Educational
Administration, School Business Affairs, and the NASSP Bulletin. Professor
Lyons earned the Ph.D. at The Ohio State University.
Terri H. Mozingo has more than 20 years in public education. Her previous
positions include teacher, assistant principal, project coordinator, and curriculum
director. She is currently assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction
xiv ABOUT THE AUTHORS
with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) School System. Her research interests
include organizational change, work teams, and restructuring secondary schools.
Laurence Parker is an associate professor in the Department of Educational
Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research
and teaching interests include educational leadership and diversity, education
law and teacher testing, and diversity and evaluation.
Xue Lan Rong is Associate Professor in School of Education at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on cultures, race/ethnicity
and education, and the effects of immigrant generation on immigrant children's
schooling. Her previous publications include Educating Immigrant Students:
What we need to know to meet the challenge (with J. Preissle, 1998), and The
effects of immigrant generation and ethnicity on educational attainment among
young African and Caribbean Blacks in the United States (with F. Brown) in
Harvard Education Review (2001).
Charles J. Russo is the Panzer Chair in Education and professor in Educational
Leadership at the University of Dayton. He is also editor of Education and
Urban Society. He earned both his J.D. and Ed.D. in Educational Administration
and Supervision from St. John's University in New York City. His teaching
and research interests include education law and policy, equity and school
desegregation.
Linda C. Tillman is an associate professor in the Department of Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies at Wayne State University. Her research
interests focus on mentoring African American faculty, teachers and adminis-
trators, the education of African Americans in K-16 education, principalship
preparation, and culturally responsive research approaches using qualitative
research methods.
Leonard A. Valverde is professor of Education Leadership and Policy Studies
at Arizona State University. Also, he is the Executive Director of the Hispanic
Border Leadership Institute, a eight member consortium of higher education
institutions. Over his 30 year career, he has researched and published
extensively on matters relating to the education of students of color, primarily
in urban settings. His focus the past ten years has been on leadership and how
persons of color can make a positive difference in the learning of students. His
scholarship perspective has been complimented by serving in the role of a
About the Authors xv
program director and teacher supervisor at the K-12 school level as well as
college dean and academic vice president at the university level.
James G. Ward is Professor of Educational Administration at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he specializes in education finance,
educational politics, and organization and democratic theory. He is a past
president of the American Education Finance Association. He has been a
classroom teacher, an educational policy analyst, and served from 1977 to 1985
as Director of Research, American Federation of Teachers. He has been an
elected school board member in a small urban school district.
Dawn G. Williams is a Doctoral Candidate in Educational Policy Studies with
a concentration in Policy Analysis at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. She is a former Virginia and North Carolina elementary school
teacher and now also serves as a Teaching Assistant in the departments of
Educational Policy Studies and Curriculum and Instruction. Her research
interests include the achievement gap between African American and white
students, standardized-based reform and federal involvement in local education.
PREFACE
The idea of the public common school as it was conceptualized in the era of
the Enlightenment has found its greatest trial in the cities of America. That
virtuous governments could exist only if structured on a system of universal
mass education delivered by the means of public schools was a cornerstone and
basic tenent of American democracy. The weight of a churning population of
races, cultures, nationalities, ethnic groups, with a never ending polyglot
of tongues that issued forth a foundation of educational complexities is
American cities constitutes the ultimate crucible for public schools. Before this
great educational experiment came into existence aristocratic and religious orga-
nizations ruled the people by arbitrary power and caprice in nearly all the lands
with these two powerful institutions opposed and sought to stamp out state
secular schools in spite of the fact that under the old regime illiteracy rates
were enormous. Fully aware that the labors of ignorant are easily exploited
and controlled with simplistic myth and superstitions, the seats of monarchial and
church power, doggedly held to the status quo. This state of affairs existed as
late as the 19th and 20th centuries from the Atlantic to the Bosporus and beyond.
Women were uniformly denied organized education of any real substance, as
were social, ethnic, religious and other minorities. Churches jealously guarded
their prerogatives to control the education of the youth in both Christian and
Islam cultures, with the unhappy result that shortly before 1800 only one out
of 52 young men in France had any secondary education and women much less
and the new United States was not much better off. Denominational schools
sought to educate a few, in accordance with religious doctrines, to a level of
minimal literacy sufficient only to understand moral principles for salvation.
The Enlightenment idea of universal education upset this system of controlled
illiteracy and with the advent of the industrial revolution the value of wide-
spread knowledge and scientific advancement began to require that the common
person become exposed to more widespread knowledge. Driven by the decline
in the apprenticeship system as an alternative to schooling and the limited social
interests of the denominational schools, the need for education to become more
widely diffused was recognized and accepted in America even though in mother
England there existed great and serious debate as to the efficacy and wisdom
of educating the poor.
xvii
xviii PREFACE
In America as the cities populations increased with the immigration of penni-
less and jobless aliens, poverty tended to define the city and as squalor and
slums increased. In that benighted setting of the cities there arose a belief that
a system of efficient public schools was not merely desirable, but an absolute
social necessity. The task of education was magnified as the industrial revolu-
tion exacerbated problems of the poor; rather than helping to resolve the
dilemma of urban poverty, the industrial revolution drove the poor deeper into
destitution as aggressive capitalists used cheap labor to increase their profits.
During the 19th century the growth of the cities had proceeded at an extra-
ordinarily rapid pace, and the overcrowding in American cities such as Chicago,
Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, were America's examples of the Emile Zola's
Paris. The statistics bear out the stress that was placed on the American cities.
Chicago, for example, had a mere 30,000 people in 1850, but forty years later
it was the sixth largest urban center in the world with over one million
population. As Hobsawn said in ehT egA of latipaC "The city was indeed the
most striking outward symbol of the industrial world ..." (pp. 2, 6) The rate
of urbanization and volume of growth in the United States, from 1850 to 1900,
far exceeded the rates in nearly all western countries. In the late 19th century
the urban growth had produced unusual phenomenon such as New York' s Lower
East side, one of the most overcrowded slums in the western world, were
congregated over 520 undernourished persons per acre. During the decade from
1845 to 1854 flight from Europe, especially from Ireland and Germany, over
80% of the immigrants crowded into the cities along the eastern seaboard of
the U.S.
Universal education by means of public common schools stood almost alone
as a solution to urban poverty, hopefully serving as a safely valve to prevent
social instability that had upset European countries during the revolutions of
1848. Substantial hinderances were posed by industrialists who sought to
increase their profits by paying low wages to working children and by parents
who allowed and even encouraged the exploitation of their children. The public
schools were, thus, largely ineffective until the states enacted in tandem child
labor laws and compulsory attendance laws that prevented child exploitation
by businessmen and parents. Therefore, after much struggle and reactive
opposition pitting progressive school advocates against businessmen, backward
parents, and church schools, there emerged a strong belief and acceptance that
urban life would be greatly improved by universal public schooling that would
raise the productivity of all the people, diminish rampant crime, and prevent
poverty.
The public schools, thereby, became the essential vehicle in which faith and
security was placed to mitigate the deprivations of the urban masses. These
ecaferP xix
new uniquely American institutions began to churn out an unprecedented explo-
sion of economic development and a constantly rising standard of living, quickly
becoming the envy of the world. The urban public schools created the means
for social mobility, amply demonstrated as generation after generation were
educated, intellectually elevated, and economically uplifted moved to suburbia,
exurbia, and beyond.
Then throughout the late 19th and first one-half of the 20th century city
schools received new challenges as an interstate migration of African-Americans
from the poor Southern conservative states with discriminating laws established
as a matter of systematic state segregation policies, began to move north seeking
jobs in the urban industrial states, and pursuing new freedoms. The numbers
of deprived African-Americans were greatly supplemented by the underprivi-
leged whites of Appalachia, the Ozarks, and other poor rural areas where the
public schools had been throttled by conservative political leaders who had
convinced ignorant whites to vote against their own self interests. Walter Hines
Page, the great journalist, described the situation in his famous "Forgotten Man"
speech at the turn of the century in North Carolina. He pointed out that the
percent of the white persons in that state could not read nor write and that they
along with southern African Americans existed in a stationary social condition
where illiteracy reigned and became intergenerational. These benighted people
knew no better and were devoid of knowledge aspiration, and became the
forgotten ones of society. As Hines observed, "The Forgotten Man was content
to be forgotten. He became a dead weight, but a definable opponent of social
progress. He faithfully heard the politicians on the stump praise him for the
virtues that he did not have." The Forgotten Man was told that the "other
politicians had some hairbrained plan to increase his taxes ... told him to
distrust anybody who wished to change anything. What was good enough for
his forefathers was good enough for him. Thus, the Forgotten Man became a
dupe, became thankful for being neglected."
Yet, it was many of these forgotten ones of the South that broke the bonds
of discrimination and ignorance who exited the South descending on the
northern industrial cities seeking educational, social and economic opportuni-
ties that were withheld in a reluctant South. The public schools of the cities of
the north were thereby inundated by this relentless movement of underdevel-
oped human capital. The ravages of backwardness and anti-intellectualism of
the South was fully visited upon public schools of the cities of the North placing
a concentrated educational burden on the resources of the public schools that
was a new social phenomenon and nearly impossible to remediate.
In spite of these burdens, however, the public schools of the cities continued
to assimilate and provide opportunities to the multitudes who would ultimately