Community Engagement for Better Schools: Guaranteeing Accountability, Representativeness and Equality [1st ed.] 9783030540371, 9783030540388

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xx
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
Government as Provider of Education Services (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 3-18
The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 19-33
Community Engagement and the Education Regime (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 35-55
Good Schools for Good Development: Race, Class, and Housing (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 57-74
First- and Second-Order Change (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 75-93
Front Matter ....Pages 95-95
A Chronology of School Reform (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 97-113
The Rise of School Choice: Leaving No Child Behind So Every Student Succeeds (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 115-137
Front Matter ....Pages 139-139
Building a Competitive System (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 141-158
Arguments Against Choice (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 159-176
Front Matter ....Pages 177-177
Chicago and Corporate-Led Reform (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 179-198
Milwaukee and Parental Choice (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 199-213
Perceptions of Stakeholders in School Reform (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 215-235
Front Matter ....Pages 237-237
Redefining Accountability (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 239-263
Creating a Market for Education (Michael Guo-Brennan)....Pages 265-282
Back Matter ....Pages 283-291

Citation preview

Michael Guo-Brennan

Community Engagement for Better Schools Guaranteeing Accountability, Representativeness and Equality

Community Engagement for Better Schools

Michael Guo-Brennan

Community Engagement for Better Schools Guaranteeing Accountability, Representativeness and Equality

Michael Guo-Brennan Troy University Troy, AL, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-54037-1    ISBN 978-3-030-54038-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54038-8 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Linyuan, Alex, and Ava

Preface

Throughout American history, access to a proper basic education has been central to the ability of individuals to rise above their situation. Those born to disadvantage, through hard work and access to good schools, are believed to be able to overcome their circumstances and lift themselves above their disadvantage. The struggle to guarantee access has dominated education reform for well over 100 years. This text examines that struggle, including efforts by the national, state, and local governments to guarantee public access, public funding, and public governance as a means to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality for all. Most nations have declared free basic education a right in their national constitutions. For many that do not, they have ratified and accepted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which protects a child’s right to education. Unlike most of these nations, the US Constitution makes no mention of education or of children’s rights. While the USA has signed on to the UN Convention, it has not ratified it and is not a party to it. Despite this apparent contradiction, as will be demonstrated in the pages that follow, the federal government values education, invests hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and strives to improve educational access and student performance for all children. The reason for this dilemma? Unlike many other nations, including most OECD members, education in the USA is largely viewed as an issue best left to state and local officials. While the federal government assures equitable resources, the majority of funding for schools is generated at the state and local levels. In most cities across the country, schools are financed largely by local property taxes. This can lead to great disparities between school districts within the same metropolitan region. For this reason, the federal government may intervene and put in place more equitable funding mechanisms or provide additional funding for disadvantaged students. Higher levels government may also intervene in local schools to assure equalized access to reduce economic and racial disparities in schools. This can lead to resentment and efforts by local actors to resist these change. At other times, reform efforts are resisted by those within the schools, especially when reform threatens the status quo and may reduce the power of the educational establishment as occurs when parents are given greater opportunities to select an alternative school for their vii

viii

Preface

child. This can lead to coalitions or regimes of actors to organize around efforts for improving schools or to mitigate the impact of change mandated by the courts or higher levels of government. Much of this text is devoted to discussion around regime change. The text is divided into five parts. Part I introduces and discusses the role and purpose of education in democratic society. Chapter 1 discusses the role of government as the provider of education services and the guarantee of public access, public funding, and public governance to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality. Chapter 2 looks at the role of governing regimes and the important role citizens play in local governance. Chapter 3 considers the important role of local actors and the significance of community engagement to improve schools, including how local actors engage to support or fight against various change efforts. Much school reform is set against the backdrop of racial and economic disparities between and within school districts. Chapter 4 examines the role of race, class, and housing in schools and school improvement efforts. The final chapter in this first part frames change efforts into either incremental process driven, first-order change or second-­ order structural, systematic change. Part II examines the history of American education policy, from pre-colonial private schools and the earliest pauper schools in the colonies to present-day efforts which focus on accountability and standardized testing. Chapter 6 provides a brief chronology of education policies designed to develop early public schools and then efforts to make them easily available to all students, regardless of race or class. Chapter 7 picks up where Chap. 6 left off to discuss contemporary efforts to improve accountability and access through school choice. Part III includes Chaps. 8 and 9 and introduces the significance of markets and a competitive system for education. Chapter 8 discusses how other nations have implemented change that includes greater parental choice and competition while Chap. 9 provides a detailed discussion of arguments against implementing a broader framework of competition and choice. Part IV features three chapters that take a deep dive into efforts to expand parental choice through case studies of two American cities that have long histories of locally driven school reform. Chapter 10 examines efforts of a regime led by Chicago business leaders to reform Chicago Public Schools by decreasing the power of teachers and the central school district first through greater local controls for parents and then by centralizing all authority over the schools to the Mayor. Chapter 11 measures reform efforts by a community development based regime to introduce the first in the nation school voucher program for low-income families. Reform in both Chicago and Milwaukee began in the late 1980s; however, they still significantly impact public schools today. Chapter 12 measures the perceptions of those on the ground today in Chicago and Milwaukee. Through surveys, and individual in-­depth interviews, various actors provided their thoughts and beliefs about the state of education in each of their cities, including the role of choice and the importance of including a diverse set of players in efforts to improve schools. The final two chapters comprise Part V. These chapters consider the significance of accountability in an effort to establish a market for education. Chapter 13

Preface

ix

e­ xamines the role of standardized testing as a measure to hold teachers, principals, and schools accountable for their students’ performance. As an alternative to highstakes testing, the concept of inspections and accreditation that is common in higher education and non-profit organizations is introduced. Chapter 14 concludes the text by establishing the framework necessary to develop a true market for education that retains the government as provider of education services, which in turn guarantees access, funding, and governance while at the same time opens up production of education services so that the supply of services is more in line with the demand of education services to better achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality for all. Troy, AL, USA  Michael Guo-Brennan

Contents

Part I Good Schools, Good Government, and Good Cities 1 Government as Provider of Education Services������������������������������������    3 A Government Guarantee��������������������������������������������������������������������������    5 Guaranteeing Public Access����������������������������������������������������������������     5 Guaranteed Public Funding������������������������������������������������������������������     6 Guaranteeing Public Governance��������������������������������������������������������     7 Education as a Public Good? ��������������������������������������������������������������������    8 Government as Provider and Exclusive Producer of Education?��������     9 Education as a Worthy Good����������������������������������������������������������������    10 Separating Production and Provision Through Choice������������������������������   11 What Is School Choice?����������������������������������������������������������������������    13 Giving Parents Choice ������������������������������������������������������������������������    15 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   16 2 The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change����������������������   19 An Active Citizenry ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   20 Regime Theory������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   21 Managing Obstacles����������������������������������������������������������������������������    23 Criticism of Regime Analysis��������������������������������������������������������������    24 Changing Regimes and a Diffuse Agenda ������������������������������������������������   25 Regime Types��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    26 Regime Typology and Urban Schools��������������������������������������������������������   28 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   31 3 Community Engagement and the Education Regime��������������������������   35 Failure to Guarantee Accountability, Responsiveness, and Equality��������   37 Maintaining the Status Quo ����������������������������������������������������������������    37 Mandated Top-Down Change��������������������������������������������������������������    38 Voluntary Bottom-Up Change ������������������������������������������������������������    40 Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology������������������������   41 Reform Through Mandated Change����������������������������������������������������    41 xi

xii

Contents

Reform Through Legally Imposed Court Decisions����������������������������    42 Reform Through State Takeovers��������������������������������������������������������    46 Reform Through Legislation����������������������������������������������������������������    50 Reform Through Bottom-Up Change: The Detroit Market Regime����    50 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   52 4 Good Schools for Good Development: Race, Class, and Housing ������   57 Geography of Opportunity������������������������������������������������������������������������   58 Place, Race, and Class ������������������������������������������������������������������������    59 Urban Development ����������������������������������������������������������������������������    60 Planning and Zoning����������������������������������������������������������������������������    65 Housing and Education������������������������������������������������������������������������������   66 School Performance and Housing Price����������������������������������������������    67 Attractive People and Jobs������������������������������������������������������������������    68 Combating Socioeconomic Segregation Through School Choice ������    69 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   72 5 First- and Second-Order Change ����������������������������������������������������������   75 Education to Improve Society��������������������������������������������������������������������   76 Defining Change����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   77 First-Order Reform������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   78 Limitations of Incrementalism������������������������������������������������������������    79 Making Change Traditional Style��������������������������������������������������������    80 Elements of Traditional First-Order Incremental Reform ������������������    81 Second-Order Reform��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   84 New Rules and New Systems��������������������������������������������������������������    85 Elements of Second-Order Structural Change������������������������������������    86 Increasing Choice��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    87 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   91 Part II Change, Change, and More Change 6 A Chronology of School Reform������������������������������������������������������������   97 The Development of American Schools����������������������������������������������������   98 Increasing Access and Representativeness������������������������������������������    98 Common Schools ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 Who Should Attend, What School, and What Should They Learn?����������  101 Competing Interests ����������������������������������������������������������������������������   101 Progressive Education Reform������������������������������������������������������������������  102 A New Country for a New Century ����������������������������������������������������   103 Centralizing Authority ������������������������������������������������������������������������   104 The Rise in Federal Influence Since World War II������������������������������������  105 Sputnik and the Red Scare ������������������������������������������������������������������   105 Elementary and Secondary School Act������������������������������������������������   106 Coleman Report ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   106

Contents

xiii

A Nation at Risk����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  108 A People at Risk����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   108 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  111 7 The Rise of School Choice: Leaving No Child Behind So Every Student Succeeds ��������������������������������������������������������������������  115 A Nation at Risk����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  117 Leaving No Child Behind��������������������������������������������������������������������������  119 Failure of NCLB����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   119 Making Sure Every Student Succeeds ������������������������������������������������������  120 Racing to Washington��������������������������������������������������������������������������   121 Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind������������������������������������������������   122 Limited Access to Public Choice Schools ������������������������������������������������  123 Expanding Choice��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  126 Civic Engagement��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   127 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  134 Part III Introducing a Market for Education 8 Building a Competitive System��������������������������������������������������������������  141 Separating Provision from Production������������������������������������������������������  142 Marketizing Education������������������������������������������������������������������������   144 Market Mechanisms in Other Countries����������������������������������������������������  145 Why Not Privatize All the Schools?����������������������������������������������������������  147 Meeting Demand����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  148 Regulated Market��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  150 The Return of the Unions��������������������������������������������������������������������������  152 The Competitive System of New Orleans��������������������������������������������������  153 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  156 9 Arguments Against Choice����������������������������������������������������������������������  159 Argument: Choice Results in Skimming ��������������������������������������������������  160 Reducing and Mitigating Segregation��������������������������������������������������   163 Segregation and Self-Selection������������������������������������������������������������   164 Argument: Choice Negatively Impacts Public School Funding����������������  164 Argument: Only Involved Parents Access Choice Options�����������������������  168 Argument: Choice Does Not Produce Positive Performance��������������������  171 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  174 Part IV Big City Schools, Local Actors, and Change on the Ground 10 Chicago and Corporate-Led Reform ����������������������������������������������������  179 School Reform in Chicago������������������������������������������������������������������������  180 History of School Reform Efforts in Chicago ������������������������������������   180 Mitigating Factors in Reform: Mismanagement and Financial Problems������������������������������������������������������������������������   182 Post “A Nation at Risk” Reforms in Chicago��������������������������������������   184

xiv

Contents

Chicago Public School Act of 1988 ��������������������������������������������������������   187 Expanding the Regime������������������������������������������������������������������������   188 1995 Reform Yet Another Approach����������������������������������������������������������  188 Other Reforms Advocated by Business Community ��������������������������   190 Business Elite and the Economic Development Regime ��������������������   190 Renaissance 2010 and Charter Schools ��������������������������������������������������   191 Conclusions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  194 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  196 11 Milwaukee and Parental Choice������������������������������������������������������������  199 The Local Regime��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  200 Reform Efforts in Milwaukee��������������������������������������������������������������������  201 Milwaukee as the “Regimeless City”��������������������������������������������������������  202 Post-World War II: A Time of Growth������������������������������������������������   202 School Reforms of the 1970s and 1980s����������������������������������������������   203 Creating an Education Market: The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  205 Increasing the Education Market: Charter Schools ����������������������������������  208 Conclusion ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  209 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211 12 Perceptions of Stakeholders in School Reform�������������������������������������  215 Performance Is Only Part of the Story ������������������������������������������������������  216 Who Should Be Involved ��������������������������������������������������������������������   218 Obstacles to Reform����������������������������������������������������������������������������   220 Who Is Best to Fix the System?����������������������������������������������������������   222 Preferred Reforms��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   224 Support for a Competitive System ������������������������������������������������������   233 Testing the Results ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  234 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  235 Part V Guaranteeing Accountability Through Choice 13 Redefining Accountability ����������������������������������������������������������������������  239 From Access to Accountability������������������������������������������������������������������  241 The Problem with the Existing Accountability System ����������������������   242 A New Framework for Accountability������������������������������������������������������  244 Criticism of Standardized Testing��������������������������������������������������������   244 Standardized Tests Really Don’t Matter����������������������������������������������   245 Considering Other Models of Accountability��������������������������������������   247 Accountability in Other Countries ������������������������������������������������������   247 An American Inspectorate��������������������������������������������������������������������������  252 Inspections Are Nothing New��������������������������������������������������������������   253 Inspections Are Common in the United States Today in Other Fields   254 Building a Better Way��������������������������������������������������������������������������   256 From Accountability to Accountability 2.0����������������������������������������������   260 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  261

Contents

xv

14 Creating a Market for Education ����������������������������������������������������������  265 Making a Competitive System������������������������������������������������������������������  269 Demand������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   269 Limited Regulatory Framework to Protect Consumers ����������������������   270 Ease of Entry for Producers ����������������������������������������������������������������   272 Independence for Producers from Excessive Government Controls ��   273 Equalized Funding ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   274 Accountability��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   276 Creating Real Accountability in the World of Choice ������������������������������  278 Accreditation Is the Price of Admission����������������������������������������������   278 Civic Engagement, Accountability 2.0, and a Competitive Market��������   279 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  281 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  283

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Parental choice options by state��������������������������������������������������������   16 Fig. 5.1 Traditional first-order reform������������������������������������������������������������   82 Fig. 5.2 Structural second-order reform ��������������������������������������������������������   86 Fig. 6.1 US PISA rankings among 36 OECD nations. (Source: OECD)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 Fig. 9.1 MPS 2019–2020 per pupil funding sources. (Source: MPS 2019–2020 Superintendents Proposed Budget)��������������������������������  166 Fig. 9.2 FY 2019 Cleveland municipal schools budget. (Source: Cleveland Municipal School District Report Card) ����������  167 Fig. 12.1 Do obstacles exist that can prevent better communication? ������������  220 Fig. 12.2 In your opinion, what is the best way to improve local schools (select up to 8). (Note: refers to percentage of total responses)��������  226

xvii

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2

City and school demographics by percent, five cities ����������������   58 Selected demographics Roxbury and Boston, MA����������������������   63

Table 8.1

Public school choices in England������������������������������������������������  147

Table 9.1

Select statistics, 2015–2016 school year ������������������������������������  169

Table 12.1 Table 12.2

Response rate by race, role, and location������������������������������������  218 To improve local schools, it is important to include a wide range of individuals and groups����������������������  218 Table 12.3 Who should be involved in school improvement efforts? ����������  219 Table 12.4 Potential obstacles to reform ������������������������������������������������������  221 Table 12.5 In your opinion, who is most likely to be in the best position to improve schools (by role then by location)? ��������������������������  223 Table 12.6 In your opinion, who is most likely to be in the best position to improve schools (for professional educators by location)? [EDUCATORS ONLY] ��������������������������������������������������������������  225 Table 12.7 Parental choice that offers parents the ability to choose a school for their child is likely to improve the quality of all schools��������������������������������������������������������������  229 Table 12.8 Schools, both public and private should have to compete to attract students������������������������������������������������������������������������  230 Table 12.9 Government should support funding of private schools through vouchers, tax credits, or other means that introduce parental choice if these schools can provide a better quality education than the traditional local public school����������������������������������������������������������������������  230 Table 12.10 Low-income families should be able to use public funds to attend private school������������������������������������������������������  232

xix

xx

List of Tables

Table 12.11 Non-educational groups should be allowed to sponsor a charter school (this would include business organizations, non-profit groups, parents, and other concerned groups)������������  233 Table 13.1 Table 13.2

OFSTED education inspectorate framework – four domains�����  249 Regional accreditation organizations������������������������������������������  257

Part I

Good Schools, Good Government, and Good Cities

Chapter 1

Government as Provider of Education Services

All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and to the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving not only their own interest but also the progress of society itself.

Abstract  A proper basic education is critical to individual success in life ranging from wages and income to happiness in life. Education also improves socialization skills, encourages children to get along and better understand each other, and increases a sense of belonging and an appreciation of differences. Those who are more highly educated are generally healthier and happier. These reasons justify government involvement and intervention to assure students and families have access to high-performing schools. For this reason, public schools and the guarantee of publicly funded education have been a cornerstone of American life for over 100 years. In the United States, government participation in schooling has traditionally involved guaranteeing public access, public funding, and public governance to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality. The focus of this chapter is an introduction to the purpose and role of government in education. The common assumption is that government should be the sole provider and monopolistic producer of education. This does not have to be true. Looking at education not as a public good but as a worthy good challenges this assumption and opens up opportunities for a multitude of producers that allow parents a variety of choices for education. Keywords  Public · Access · Funding · Governance · Worthy good · Production · Provision · Parental choice

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Guo-Brennan, Community Engagement for Better Schools, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54038-8_1

3

4

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a special commission established by then Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell, published a scathing report titled “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform” about the state of American education. The quotation above, taken from that report, is an expression of deeply held beliefs about American education. A proper basic education is critical to individual success in life ranging from wages and income to happiness in life. The correlation between education and income is well documented (Patrinos & Psacharopoulos, 2018; Unemployment rates and earnings by educational attainment, 2019). There is also considerable research that suggests formal education also improves socialization skills, encourages children to get along and better understand each other, and increases a sense of belonging and an appreciation of difference. People with higher levels of education are generally healthier and happier, even when factoring for the impact of income (Cemalcilar, 2010; Fiske & Ladd, 2017; Florida, 2010; Gilead, 2017; Heckman, Humphries, & Veramendi, 2018; Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2019; Juncal & Fernando Pérez de, 2012; Sachs et al., 2019; Targamadzė & Zuoza, 2011; Wan-chi, 2012). A Nation at Risk (1983) warned of the pending risk facing the United States and highlighted the impact how the nation’s schools were failing. Writing in the report: Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaking by competitors throughout the world…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future… If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

The report goes on to focus on the dire consequences that could fall on America if drastic measures were not taken to improve schools. Numerous policy recommendations were made at the federal, state, and local level to improve schools and enable American students to compete in the developing interconnected world of the mid-1980s. The economic and technological rise of Asian countries today, including Japan, South Korea, and China, and the continued mediocre performance of American students on international testing regimes such as the OECD’s PISA call into question whether our leaders took heed to these warnings. The important role that education plays in economic prosperity, cultural development, socialization, and individual happiness justifies government involvement and intervention to assure students and families have access to high-performing schools. For this reason, public schools and the guarantee of publicly funded education have been a cornerstone of American life for over 100 years. Prior to the establishment of formal government involvement in education, the American Founding Fathers called for such a structure in the colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and other founders believed in publicly funded education and fought at both the national and state levels for taxation to provide for schools. In 1749, Franklin outlined a strategy for public education in Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania. This proposal led to the founding of the Academy of Philadelphia that in 1791 would become the University of Pennsylvania. As President,

A Government Guarantee

5

Jefferson proposed an amendment to the Constitution calling for the establishment of public schools financed with federal dollars (Coleman, 1966; Jefferson, 1806). Thomas Paine also wrote about the importance of government assistance for education even while colonists were fighting England for their independence. He advocated financial assistance for children whose parents, while not poor, were still unable to provide education for their children. To Paine, any well-regulated government was obligated to provide for at least a minimum level of education to its youngest citizens. He did not advocate direct government provision but rather government financial assistance to parents so they could pay for local education, especially in more rural towns and villages (Paine, 1779).

A Government Guarantee Guaranteeing Public Access In the United States, government participation in schooling has traditionally involved guaranteeing public access, public funding, and public governance to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality. Public access requires that schools are universally accessible to all students within reasoned limits. For example, schools can only house a limited number of students; therefore, limits can be placed on the number of students in a school based on available space and resources, and preference can be granted to those students who live in a geographically determined proximity to the school. As of 2018, 47 states and the District of Columbia allow universal access through some form of open enrollment which allows students to transfer to a public school other than their neighborhood school (Wixom & Keily, 2018). Another expansion of access, although not universal, are charter and magnet schools which offer an alternative option for parents seeking to opt out of their neighborhood school. Charter schools are often free of many rules and regulations that limit innovation within the regular public schools. Magnet schools offer specialized curriculum targeting certain disciplines such as science, math, or the arts. While there may not limits to who can enroll in these schools, the curriculum is dedicated towards building these skills. The open-access nature of public schools guarantees public accountability. Within the limits already discussed, public schools are accountable to those they serve. They are also responsible to the larger community, to promote the public good, to promote the idea of liberty and shared societal values (Abowitz & Stitzlein, 2018; Cucchiara, Gold, Metchell, Riffer, & Simon, 2007). Public access should guarantee representativeness and equality, and public schools should work to achieve representation in their student body and staff. Some claim non-public schools including non-public charter schools and private schools fail to achieve accountability, access, or equality, arguing they do not necessarily teach the full range of civic values that public schools teach (Abowitz & Stitzlein, 2018). They

6

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

claim private schools that can regulate whom they accept and secular schools that may teach a specific value set are neither accountable to the public nor representative of the larger public and therefore do not promote equality.

Guaranteed Public Funding Government guarantee of public funding means that public schools are funded through tax collections, often through local property taxes and funding from the state, and do not charge tuition for students to attend. This is thought to promote accountability, representativeness, and equality as schools are largely seen as a local issue in the United States. Schools are mostly funded and governed at the local level; therefore, they are most accountable to those they directly serve and those who directly finance educational services. The states and federal government also play a role. States provide some funding and therefore can promote accountability through spending requirements and other regulatory procedures. The federal government provides funding for certain programs targeting the disadvantaged and those with special needs and therefore has an interest in promoting representativeness and equality. Funding is a critical difference between public schools and private schools. Private schools do not receive public funding unless state legislation supports such funding. In Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC, certain parents are eligible for government funding to pay for private schools in the form of a voucher. Requirements differ by state, but in general vouchers are limited to students with a disability and an individualized education plan, to parents with income at or below a percentage of the poverty line, or in locations where the school is determined by the state to be failing to provide a quality education. In these instances, parents are free to choose any private school including religious schools. The value of the voucher as well as the charter school funding can vary from an amount equal to the amount the neighborhood school would receive for that child to a set amount determined by formula (Erwin, 2019). Public funding of charter school and private schools through vouchers introduces market mechanisms into the education system by allowing parents access to government funding to choose their child’s school outside their assigned neighborhood school. As states continue to expand access to choice options for parents, and individual schools and school districts face the potential of losing more and more public funding, some claim the government is no longer guaranteeing public finding or at least not guaranteeing sufficient government funding to provide the necessary resources to public schools (Epple, Romano, & Urquiola, 2017; Ford, 2016; Tang, 2019; Trevino, Mintrop, Villalobos, Ordenes, & University of Colorado at Boulder, 2018). This has led to considerable controversy as resources are diverted from public schools to the parents of children who are attending private schools or ­independent charter schools. This funding can be in the form of a voucher or other amount predetermined by the state.

A Government Guarantee

7

Guaranteeing Public Governance Public governance is a critical feature of any public organization and includes transparent and open decision-making. Open and transparent governance allows for accountability, promotes representativeness, and signifies the importance of equality. Decisions are made through formal and informal arrangements that involve many stakeholders both inside and outside of government. Accountability, efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness are critical aspects of public governance, as is the rule of law. As public institutions, public schools are expected to act in democratic fashion, inviting public involvement and community engagement. Decisions about the operations of schools, including curricula, finances, and the use of resources, including buildings and human capital are made in open public meetings by a publicly accountable government board. In general, governing boards either are elected directly by those who live within the geographic boundaries of the district or are appointed by an elected official who represents that geographic area, usually the mayor. The governing board should be representative of the children and families who attend the school. Some view the concept of public governance as a challenge for non-public charter and private schools which may be governed not by an elected board but by a board of stakeholders appointed by organizational management or, in the case of a for-profit school, by a completely private and non-independent corporate management team. This is a legitimate issue of concern. Private, corporate management teams may not feel accountable to the parents. At the same time, parents are their customers, and any successful business should be accountable to its customers, and as customers, parents need a voice in decisions that impact their children. It is also important to note that in many large cities, including Chicago, the Chicago Public School board is not an elected body. Members are appointed by the mayor, and therefore there is no guarantee they represent the interests of parents. These non-­ elected governance structures may challenge accountability, representativeness, and equality. While public schools should represent shared community interests, non-­ public schools may have interests that diverge from those of the public at large (Abowitz & Stitzlein, 2018). Rather than concern for the public good, board members may be considering other issues such as larger organizational priorities or even profit margins in the case of private schools. The issue here goes to the heart of accountability and accountability to whom and to what? All organizations, public or non-public, are accountable to multiple stakeholders. For public institutions such as schools, accountability has traditionally been towards the public good. Public governance aids in accountability as well as assuring representativeness and equality of access. Publicly elected and accountable governing boards that are ideally representative of those directly impacted by the schools assure equal access (with state and federal oversight). This can become a challenge for any school when there is doubt about where accountability lies. For schools to be accountable, parents need a voice in decision-making.

8

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

Public governance is not the only one measure of accountability. Schools are responsible to be responsive to not only parents’ needs but also student performance. In recent decades, there has been a considerable emphasis placed on testing regimes to assure accountability. Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), schools were required to test students to assure they were learning the mandated curriculum. This can call into question the goals of education and what the proper measure is of accountability. In 2013, 35 Atlanta public school staff were indicted by a grand jury for a cheating scandal that involved falsifying student tests in order to meet the requirements of NCLB. Those involved were accused of racketeering for changing student test scores for personal gain. Under the Atlanta testing regime, teachers and administrators whose students performed well were eligible for financial payouts through bonuses and other incentives (Fausset & Blinder, 2015). Similar scandals involving falsifying test scores have occurred in other cities including El Paso Texas, Waterbury Connecticut, and Camden New Jersey (Claudio, 2013; Toppo, 2011).

Education as a Public Good? In the United States, regardless of the nature of the school, be it public or non-­ public, schools are viewed as democratic institutions that promote the public good. Governments at all levels have sought nearly constant reform to improve the quality of schools. Federal government policies designed to improve quality, increase access, and promote equality in schools have been put in place to guarantee access, accountability, and equality. The Elementary and Secondary School Act (ESEA, 1965), part of the Johnson administration’s “War on Poverty,” sought to attack social ills and reduce inequalities in education by targeting billions of dollars in federal aid to the poor and minority groups who had traditionally not performed well in school in the name of promoting the public good (Tyack, 1974). Less than 20 years later, the federal government once again sought new avenues to improve the public good through better schools with the release of “A Nation at Risk” (1983). In 2001, the federal government, in reauthorizing ESEA, passed the No Child Left Behind Act with the hopes of improving educational outcomes through a heavy reliance on testing and by promoting innovation and greater access to school choice for parents whose children were attending failing schools (Easley, 2005). Governmental efforts to promote education for the public good also assume that education itself is a public good. A public good is available to all individuals regardless of ability to pay. It is available to freely share among the general population, and it is nearly impossible to exclude others from enjoying its use (Abowitz & Stitzlein, 2018). Education is often viewed as a public good due to its positive spillover effects. Providing the general public with a basic education enabling them to read, write, and do mathematics benefits not only themselves as individuals but also the larger society by encouraging participation in the democratic process. A general education makes people better citizens in a number of ways including increasing

Education as a Public Good?

9

their economic potential (higher wages); encouraging greater productivity, creativity, and innovation; and improving the general welfare of fellow citizens (Abowitz & Stitzlein, 2018; Shaw, 2010). In addition to these positive externalities or spillovers, there is the potential for some to act as “free riders” who receive all the benefits of a highly educated society without paying for it in time or effort. Unlike obtaining appropriate clearance to drive a car on the roadways, which is not a right and requires an individual to meet certain requirements and pay a fee to obtain a license, education is viewed in much the same was as clean air, an entitled liberty and shared public good that is freely available to all, and that all pay for, in the form of taxes or other fees, regardless of how much an individual uses. One cannot live in America without paying for access to the shared clean air that permeates the atmosphere. Even for those who do not pay taxes, they bear the cost of clean air by limitations to their liberties (it is illegal to pollute, and one can be fined or jailed for doing so). For these reasons, basic education has traditionally been viewed as a public good, freely available to all and in much of American history considered a mandate from government.

Government as Provider and Exclusive Producer of Education? Most people view education as a public good. This justifies the idea of education as a government monopoly that both provides for educational services and produces those services, much in the same way that government has a monopoly on the guarantee of clean air or water or for national defense. The (national) government provides resources for national defense and therefore the defense of individual citizens and also produces national defense by maintaining a standing military force. As a monopoly, educational services are financed through taxes, user fees, charges, or a combination of each (educational services are provided by the government), and actual classroom instruction and school administration are then performed by government employees (government produces educational services). The government is the primary (or, in some cases, the sole) provider and producer of educational services. This distinction is important that needs clarification. To provide services means to supply or make available something that is needed or wanted. Cambridge University Press (Provide, 2019) defines provide as “giv(ing) something to a person, company or organization, or to make it available for then to use.” When a government provides Medicare or Medicaid benefits, it does so in the form of health insurance. Those accessing benefits receive those services from a nongovernment actor. The individual accessing benefits or organization producing the services is then reimbursed by the government, often at a reduced rate. Revenues to pay for those services are generated through tax collections and in some cases through a premium paid by those accessing the services. Producing services involves creating something or bringing it into existence (Produce, 2019). Government provides the resources; it does not create medical care. Nongovernment actors create the cures and medicines that patients need. In

10

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

this way, the provision of medical care is separate from the production of medical care. Nothing prevents educational services from operating in the same fashion, other than ideological differences. Government-financed and government-operated public schools both provide educational services and produce them. This model is being challenged in some cities and states across the country through charters, vouchers, and other options that offer parental choice. As the sole producer and provider of most education services, education is essentially a government monopoly. The rise of greater school choice options, including government funding of nongovernment schools, reduces the pure monopoly of public education slightly to a near-monopoly. In the fall of 2019, approximately 56.6 million children attended elementary, middle, and high schools in the United States. Among those students, about 5.8 million or 10.2% attended private schools (Back to school statistics, 2019). This has also led some to question the nature of education as a public good, particularly those that favor greater market-based education reform. Some, including Jane Shaw, view education as largely a private good, since those who “purchase” education services directly benefit from those services. Shaw argues that when education is treated as a pure public good, provided and produced by government and financed by tax payers, there is little incentive to assure that it is provided in the correct amount and of high quality; it is at best a “bad” public good (Shaw, 2010). The poor quality of many urban schools and the repeated failed attempt to bring drastic improvements to these schools would appear to be strong anecdotal evidence to support this perspective.

Education as a Worthy Good Although not a widely held opinion, a more accurate description may be to describe education as a “worthy good” (Savas, 2000). Worthy goods are goods and services that are so important that their consumption should be encouraged regardless of the consumer’s ability to pay. Government either provides these goods directly or subsidizes their provision by others, often private firms. Public goods may also be worthy goods, but not all worthy goods are public goods. In this way, the production of services is separated from the provision of services. Government provides the services through a guarantee of funding (accountability), access (equality), and governance (representativeness), while a variety of suppliers may produce the services for consumers, including the government. Governments at all levels routinely separate the production of services from the provision of services. At the local level, many communities have fully privatized some services such as garbage collection, cable/Internet services, or other utilities that were once commonly produced and provided for by the government. The government guarantees the provision of services such as garbage collection while ­contracting with a nongovernmental organization to produce the collection of garbage. Through regulations and contractual agreements, accountability, equality, and representativeness are guaranteed. In other instances, communities may allow mul-

Separating Production and Provision Through Choice

11

tiple organizations to compete to produce services such as cable or Internet services. The government provides for these services by contracting with a company who may pay a franchise fee to the government in order to have access to the local community. To the general public, these private corporations may be viewed as the provider and producer of services; however, this is only as a result of government sanction. At the state and federal level, many services previously produced and provided by government are now produced by nongovernmental organizations. The ongoing debate in the United States over health care is a debate about the provision and production of health services. Traditionally, health care has been mostly produced and provided by the private and non-profit sectors, with the government providing some services in the form of subsidies for lower-income individuals and both providing and producing health care for veterans through VA health services. In exchange for reduced costs, individuals who have insurance through a provider such as an employer or other means may select among a list of approved doctors (producers) for their health-care needs. They may access those not on an approved list, but will pay a higher cost for their care. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) sought to increase government provision of health care without increasing the direct production of services. During the 2016 and 2020 presidential election cycles, debates within the Democratic Party were about how involved the government should be in the provision of health care. Some favored an elimination of private providers for a government-run and government-­funded system dubbed “Medicare for all” (Sanders, 2019; Warren, 2019), while others preferred a greater government role or “government option” where the government acts as both provider and producer of medical insurance as a direct competitor with private providers (Biden, 2019; Buttigieg, 2019). On the Republican side, there were ongoing efforts to reduce federal government direct involvement in health care by repealing the ACA and reducing or eliminating government subsidies available under the ACA.

Separating Production and Provision Through Choice Most efforts to improve education since the end of World War II have focused on traditional reforms that maintain government as the near exclusive produce and provider of education services. These reforms have called for greater funding, legislation to reduce discrimination, and curriculum changes to improve student outcomes while retaining the near-monopoly role of government. States largely control curriculum; however, both the federal and state governments have implemented legislation to focus curriculum in core subjects and to increase inclusivity. The federal government, along with state governments, and federal and state courts have mandated change to reduce discrimination to make education more equitable and ­accessible. The federal government has sought mechanisms to increase funding to reduce racial inequalities in education by targeting resources towards programs meant to increase access and opportunity and decrease racial and economic segrega-

12

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

tion in schools. These traditional or first-order reforms rely heavily on those inside the educational system to drive change efforts. Advocates of larger structural reform as a means to improve schools believe these traditional efforts have failed over the past 100 years and look towards structures that separate production of education from the provision of education. They promote different sets of options, often including greater school choice as evidence that government can provide services effectively while not producing them directly and still guarantee funding (representativeness, accountability), access (equality, representativeness), and governance (accountability, equality). This would, from their perspective, guarantee both provision and production while allowing parents to choose a school that best meets their individual needs in a similar way they choose a doctor.1 School choice advocates believe that while government involvement is justified as a means to improve the public good and allow citizens to achieve their goals and improve the greater society, this does not mean that government has to be the sole provider and producer for schools to operate efficiently and productively. Separating production from provision is hardly a new or even novel concept (Friedman, 1955, 1982; Ostrom, Tiebout, & Warren, 1961). Rather than rely on traditional inside-out reform efforts that primarily involve education experts and those inside the schools, non-traditional actors are challenging the traditional education regime through efforts that seek to expand reform options by restructuring the educational system. Actors that may join an effort to alter the education system include a wide variety of interests including parents, non-profit organizations, religious organizations, business, and others. Described as community engagement, civic capacity, integrated governance, community building, and by other terms, reformers seek to build broad support for change through new power structures that include new stakeholders and new relationships (Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999; Saegert, 2006; Shirley, 1997; Stone, 2001; Stone, Henig, Jones, & Pierannunzi, 2001, p. 7; Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos, & Rutledge, 2007, pp. 12–13). These interests are able to organize and come together to engage state legislatures to enact change. Diverse stakeholders routinely come together to encourage local development. This could include physical infrastructure to improve local services or to encourage development that leads to new jobs. Education involves a completely different set of issues that are humane in nature rather than physical. It is easier to measure the costs and benefits of physical development and job creation than the costs and benefits of better schools, which may take years to develop. For broad community engagement to develop around schools, stakeholders must address these issues and the divisions they have tended to create (Stone, 1998, 2001; Stone et al., 2001). The number and variety of actors involved in community-driven education change make this level of cooperation difficult to sustain and have led to reform failures in several American cities including Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, and San Francisco (Stone, 2001). Each stakeholder may see the cause of poor-performing  There are key differences in the analogy, namely, that with health care, insurance companies seek to reduce costs by limiting patient choice, but a similar mechanism applies. Limits of school choice today are based on state legislation. 1

Separating Production and Provision Through Choice

13

schools differently and therefore may propose different solutions to fix schools. Education experts including teachers, administrators, and curriculum experts may see the lack of funding and lack of parental support as the primary source of problems in schools. Parents and some in the business community may blame teachers and administrators. Community organizing groups often focus on power relationships and may blame failing schools on the inequality in power that leads to the lack of investment in the community and lack of jobs that create undue pressures on families (Saegert, 2006; Stone et al., 2001). Community engagement and the differences between traditional reform, structural reforms, and the role of different regimes will be discussed in Chap. 3.

What Is School Choice? “School choice” is a very broad term and includes numerous alternatives to the traditional neighborhood school. Legislatures of the various states determine education policy including the types of schools eligible for public funding and the options parents have in determining a school for their child to attend; therefore, government retains an essential role in providing education services. Every state offers some form of support for at least a minimum level of school choice, though the type of support varies considerably among the states. Policies related to school choice can be broken down to two main categories, policies that encourage investment in education and policies that promote alternative school choices. Policies and programs designed to promote investment in education include tax credits and education savings accounts. Tax credits (TC), allowed in 20 states, are generally available in two forms, tax credit for donations for scholarships (TCS) or individual tax credits and deductions (ITC). TCS encourage donations to non-profit organizations that provide scholarships to students to attend private schools or that offer grants and other financial supports to schools directly. Among the 18 states that offer TCS, individuals and/or businesses are eligible to file for a tax credit for all or a portion of their donation against their state income tax. In some states, scholarships can be used to pay for transportation to a non-­neighborhood school. In eight states, parents are allowed to claim deductions or receive tax credits on state income tax for approved educational expenses through ITC.  Approved expenses will be eligible for a full or partial credit or deduction and can include private school tuition and other related costs. The nature of ITC requires that parents pay for all expenses upfront and claim a credit or deduction when completing state income taxes. In 2013, Alabama became the first state to enact refundable tax credits which made it easier for more moderate-income families to access this benefit. Unlike traditional tax credits, refundable tax credits allow parents to receive a tax refund for qualified educational expenses, even if those expenses exceed their taxes owed. Parents must still file a tax return to receive the refund, and the refund may not be 100% of expenses (How do k–12 education tax credits and deductions work?, 2019; What is an education savings account?, 2019).

14

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

Education savings accounts (ESA) provide public funds for approved educational expenses to eligible students in the form of a government-authorized savings account. States that have enacted ESA laws have specific requirements for eligibility and for eligible expenses. In some states, they may be used only if the student is attending a private school. Funds may also be used for private tutoring, online learning programs, education-related therapies, and some higher education costs including textbooks. Arizona enacted the first ESA law in 2011. Six states have enacted ESA laws including Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Tennessee; however, the Nevada program is inactive as the state legislature has chosen to not fund the program. ESA laws in the five states where the program is currently active limit eligibility to students with special needs (Education trends, 2016; What is an education savings account?, 2019). Unlike tax credits and education savings accounts that encourage investment in education service, policies that promote alternative school choices allow parents to access non-public schools and the government funding that would normally flow to the local public schools. While the various states offer different mechanisms for alternative school choice, the general practice diverts all or a portion of state funds for that individual student to follow that student to the school of his or her (parents) choice. Alternative school choice programs include open enrollment, charter schools, and vouchers. Open enrollment (OE) is the most common form of school choice and is also the least disruptive to the public school system. Open enrollment policies allow parents to transfer their child to a public other than their assigned neighborhood school and can be one of two types. Intra-district enrollment allows students to transfer to another public school within their home school district. Inter-district allows students to transfer to any public school outside their home district. Open enrollment can be either mandatory, meaning districts are required to accept inter- or intratransfers, or it may be voluntary, which allows district to choose whether they participate in open enrollment, or it may be some combination of the two depending on local conditions and enabling legislation. As of 2018, 47 states and the District of Columbia allowed some form of open enrollment (50-state comparison: Open enrollment policies, 2018). Laws that allow intra-district or inter-district transfers are limited to regular public schools and do not include charter or non-public schools, including private schools. Charter schools (C) are schools that receive public funding, but may or may not be a part of the local school district. The authorizing organization grants a charter, which identifies the structure of the school, including how it will be managed, who the school will serve, as well as measures of success. Charter schools are schools operated either by the local public school district or by another organization not affiliated with the public schools. Different states allow different types of organizations to authorize, establish, and operate charter schools. The various states also determine how charter schools and their authorizers are held accountable, teacher certification requirements, and whether charter school teachers are required to be part of a local teachers’ union. Charter school operators may include public schools, non-profit organizations, religious organizations, groups of parents, and even pri-

Separating Production and Provision Through Choice

15

vate business. In general, charter schools are able to operate free of many of the bureaucratic and administrative requirements of public schools. In theory, this allows charter schools to innovate and provide a different educational experience for their students. The first charter school law was enacted in Minnesota in 1991. Since then, 44 states and the District of Columbia have approved charter schools (50-state comparison: Charter school policies, 2018). Much like tax credits and education savings accounts, vouchers (V) allow parents to use government funding to pay for private school tuition; there are, however, key differences. To access tax credits, parents must first pay for the tuition upfront and will receive a deduction in taxes owed or a tax credit for all or a portion of the expense at the time they file state income taxes. School vouchers, much like housing vouchers, provide a payment directly to the school from the government to finance tuition and other direct expenses to attend an eligible private school. The value of the voucher is determined by legislation, whereas the tax credit is based on the parents’ tax obligation to the state. In 1990, the Wisconsin state legislature enacted the first modern voucher law, the Milwaukee Parental Choice program. The law legitimized parental choice and established the first government-funded modern voucher program in the United States so that low-income parents could access private schools. For more information and a detailed discussion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice program, see Chap. 11.

Giving Parents Choice Qualified parents can access vouchers in 16 states and the District of Columbia. Eligibility varies by state; however, in most states, vouchers are limited to families under a certain income level (LI) and students with disabilities or an individualized education plan (IEP) or who are attending a failing school, and in Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, there are specific programs in certain metro areas. Figure 1.1 demonstrates the rainbow of options available in the different states for parental school choice. Open enrollment and charter schools are the most widely available choices for parents. Vouchers, limited to low-income families or those attending failing schools, are next, followed by tax credits and education savings accounts which are more likely to favor the middle class. Florida offers the most for qualified parents, including charter schools, vouchers for special needs students and low-income families, tax credits, education savings accounts, and open enrollment. Nevada and Arizona offer a similar range of services, however, exclude vouchers. As previously discussed, ESA are currently not available in Nevada due to funding cutbacks. Choice options are extremely limited in Alabama where the state only approved charter schools in 2015. Vouchers are not available to students, and Alabama does not allow open enrollment for regular public schools. For any significant reform to come about, it requires community-wide engagement and a sustained effort and support from elected officials as well as stakeholders inside and outside the schools. This chapter has identified the clear role

16

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

Fig. 1.1  Parental choice options by state

government plays in providing for educational services. Chapter 2 turns towards a detailed discussion about the value of an engaged set of actors and their ability to organize around school reform.

References 50-state comparison: Charter school policies. (2018, January). Retrieved from https://www.ecs. org/charter-school-policies/ 50-state comparison: Open enrollment policies. (2018, October 30). Retrieved from https://www. ecs.org/open-enrollment-policies/ Abowitz, K.  K., & Stitzlein, S.  M. (2018). Public schools, public goods, and public work. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(3), 33–37. Back to school statistics. (2019). Fast facts. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display. asp?id=372 Biden, J. (2019). Health care. Retrieved from https://joebiden.com/healthcare/ Buttigieg, P. (2019). A new era for health in america. Retrieved from https://peteforamerica. com/a-new-era-for-health/ Cemalcilar, Z. (2010). Schools as socialisation contexts: Understanding the impact of school climate factors on students’ sense of school belonging. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 59(2), 243–272. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2009.00389.x

References

17

Claudio, S. (2013). El paso schools cheating scandal: Who’s accountable? In: National Public Radio, Inc. Washington, D.C. Coleman, J.  S. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity (coleman) study (eeos). (6389). Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education/ National Center for Education Statistics (producer). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3886/ ICPSR06389.v3 Cucchiara, M., Gold, E., Metchell, C., Riffer, M., & Simon, E. (2007). A philadelphia story: Building civic capacity for school reform in a privatizing system. Retrieved from Philadelphia: http://www.researchforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/publication-photos/96/Gold_E_ Building_Civic_Capacity_for_School_Reform.pdf Easley, J. (2005). The political tensions of education as a public good: The voice of a Martin Luther King, Jr., scholar. Education and Urban Society, 37(4), 490–505. https://doi. org/10.1177/0013124505277840 Education Trends. (2016). Education savings accounts: Key provisions and state variations. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States. Epple, D., Romano, R. E., & Urquiola, M. (2017). School vouchers: A survey of the economics literature. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(2), 441–492. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20150679 Erwin, B. (2019, April 18). Interactive guide to school choice laws. Retrieved from http://www. ncsl.org/research/education/interactive-guide-to-school-choice.aspx Fausset, R., & Blinder, A. (2015). Stiff sentences for 8 educators in test scandal. (Cover story). New York Times, 164(56837), A1–A12. Fiske, E. B., & Ladd, H. F. (2017). Self-governing schools, parental choice, and the need to protect the public interest. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(1), 31–36. Florida, R. (2010, February 19). What makes happy cities happy. Retrieved from https://www. creativeclass.com/_v3/creative_class/2010/02/19/what-makes-happy-cities-happy/ Ford, M. R. (2016). Funding impermanence: Quantifying the public funds sent to closed schools in the nations’s first urban school voucher program. Public Administration Quarterly, 40(4), 882–912. Friedman, M. (1955). The role of government in education. In R. A. Solo (Ed.), Economics and the public interest. Camden, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved from http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm Friedman, M. (1982). Capitalism and freedom (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gilead, T. (2017). Education’s role in the economy: Towards a new perspective. Cambridge Journal of Education, 47(4), 457–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2016.1195790 Heckman, J. J., Humphries, J. E., & Veramendi, G. (2018). The nonmarket benefits of education and ability. Journal of Human Capital, 12(2), 282–304. Helliwell, J.  F., Layard, R., & Sachs, J.  D. (Eds.). (2019). World happiness report. New  York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Henig, J. R., Hula, R. C., Orr, M., & Pedescleaux, D. S. (1999). The color of school reform: Race, politics, and the challenge of urban education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. How do k–12 education tax credits and deductions work? (2019). Types of school choice. Retrieved from https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/ how-do-k-12-education-tax-credits-deductions-work/ Jefferson, T. (1806). State of the union address. Retrieved from http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?domumentprint=1209 Juncal, C., & Fernando Pérez de, G. (2012). Does education affect happiness? Evidence for Spain. Social Indicators Research, 108(1), 185. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A Nation at Risk: The Imperatives for Education Reform. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Education Retrieved from http:// www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/title.html Ostrom, V., Tiebout, C. M., & Warren, R. (1961). The organization of government in metropolitan areas: A theoretical inquiry. The American Political Science Review, 55(4), 831–842.

18

1  Government as Provider of Education Services

Paine, T. (1779). Rights of man: Part second: Combining principle and practice. In Vol. 2. M. D. Conway (Ed.), The Writing of Thomas Paine (1894). Retrieved from http://oll.libertyfund.org/ title/344/17361 Patrinos, H.  A., & Psacharopoulos, G. (2018, December 8). Strong link between education and earnings. Retrieved from https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/strong-link-betweeneducation-and-earnings Produce. (2019). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/produce Provide. (2019). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/provide Sachs, J. D., Adler, A., Nishr, A. B., De Neve, J. E., Durand, M., Diener, E., et al. (2019). Global happiness and wellbeing. In Global happiness and wellbeing report 2019. New  York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Saegert, S. (2006). Building civic capacity in urban neighborhoods: An empirically grounded anatomy. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28(3), 275. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2006.00292.x Sanders, B. (2019). Health care as a human right – Medicare for all. Issues. Retrieved from https:// berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/ Savas, E.  S. (2000). Privatization and public private partnerships. New  York: Chatham House Publishers. Shaw, J. S. (2010). Education-a bad public good? Independent Review, 15(2), 241–256. Shirley, D. (1997). Community organizing for urban school reform. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Stone, C.  N. (1998). Introduction: Urban education in political context. In C.  N. Stone (Ed.), Changing urban education. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Stone, C. N. (2001). Civic capacity and urban education. Urban Affairs Review, 36(5), 595. https:// doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185019 Stone, C. N., Henig, J. R., Jones, B. D., & Pierannunzi, C. (2001). Building civic capacity: The politics of reforming urban schools. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Tang, A. (2019). School vouchers, special education, and the supreme court. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 167(2), 337–397. Targamadzė, V., & Zuoza, R. (2011). Students’ socialization in general education schools: Aspect of school culture. Social Education / Socialinis Ugdymas, 15(26), 105–119. Toppo, G. (2011). Schools marred by testing scandals in 2011. Retrieved from http://libproxy.troy. edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=apg&AN=e93af3878a 2ab1cf9e77f0549a7679ab&site=eds-live Trevino, E., Mintrop, R., Villalobos, C., Ordenes, M., & University of Colorado at Boulder, N. E. P. C. (2018). What might happen if school vouchers and privatization of schools were to become “universal” in the U.S.: Learning from a national test case--chile. Retrieved from http://libproxy.troy.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eri c&AN=ED591997&site=eds-live Tyack, D. B. (1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Unemployment rates and earnings by educational attainment. (2019, September 4). Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm United States. (1965). Elementary and secondary education act of 1965 : H. R. 2362, 89th Cong., 1st sess., Public law 89–10. Reports, bills, debate and act. [Washington]: [U.S. Govt. Print. Off.], Wan-chi, C. (2012). How education enhances happiness: Comparison of mediating factors in four East Asian countries. Social Indicators Research, 106(1), 117. Warren, E. (2019). Health care is a basic human right. Retrieved from https://elizabethwarren.com/ plans/health-care What is an education savings account? (2019). Types of school choice. Retrieved from https:// www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/education-savings-account/ Wixom, M. A., & Keily, T. (2018, October 30). 50-state comparison: Open enrollment policies (2018 update). Retrieved from https://www.ecs.org/open-enrollment-policies/ Wong, K.  K., Shen, F.  X., Anagnostopoulos, D., & Rutledge, S. (2007). Improving America’s schools: The education mayor. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Chapter 2

The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. –Margaret Mead

Abstract  Traditional, top-down government decision-making has given way over that past 50 years to a more diverse set of power arrangements. This is most evident in  local government, where machine politics once dominated local government structures in cities including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New  York, and Philadelphia. This structure has evolved into a more complex yet informal form of local governance that includes less institutionalized politics and power structures and a much more diverse service delivery system. It calls for collective decision-­ making and problem-solving leading to shared responsibility and a more active and engaged citizenry. The focus of this chapter is on the significance of the urban regime in pushing change. Regime theory is discussed as is various regime typologies. A new regime typology framework is presented for use throughout the text. Keywords  Regime theory · Urban schools · Regime analysis · Governance · Regime typology

Traditional, top-down government decision-making has given way over that past 50 years to a more diverse set of power arrangements. This is most evident in local government, where machine politics once dominated local government structures in cities including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New  York, and Philadelphia. Progressive reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century called for an end to political machines and patronage, pushing legislative reforms to separate the politics of government from the administration of government. This dramatically altered © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Guo-Brennan, Community Engagement for Better Schools, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54038-8_2

19

20

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

the nature of local power and politics. Civil service reforms made it more difficult for political bosses to control local decision-making and helped slowly redefine local power relationships. New leaders emerged to challenge the existing systems. Other actors, including the business community, took a more active role in  local decision-making, diffusing power away from elected officials. The changing nature of local power reflects the changing nature of local leadership and the transition from traditional top-down command and control government to cooperative arrangements and shared governance. Traditional government involves formalized, top-down structures that provide services to the citizenry through heavily institutionalized, bureaucratic, and political power structures. This structure has evolved into a more complex yet informal form of local governance that includes less institutionalized politics and power structures and a much more diverse service delivery system. It calls for collective decision-making and problem-­ solving leading to shared responsibility and a more active and engaged citizenry.

An Active Citizenry An active and engaged citizenry is also essential for change in a functioning democracy both to serve as a check on elected representatives and to be certain those representatives act in the citizens’ interest. Active engagement in democratic governance can take many forms including voting, donating financially to causes of interest, contacting your elected representatives to express support or disapproval for issues or the representative him- or herself, attending and participating in local meetings and other public forums about issues of concern, attending campaign rallies, supporting individual candidates or political parties through financial contributions or volunteering, protesting against perceived injustice, and joining a group that is organizing for change. The shift from government to governance and the increased role of organized citizen participation create synergy between regime analysis and local decision-making in new ways and create space for an ever-increasing active citizenry. Oftentimes citizens will bond together to work for a shared cause. This can often be ad hoc and short lived. At other times citizens and groups can organize as a regime for a sustained long-term effort. A critical feature of a regime is the actors involved and their ability to influence change as a collective of dispersed interests. Regimes are “the informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together to make and carry out governing decisions” (Stone, 1989). Sustained organizing for change beyond simply protesting is perhaps the most involved form of active engagement, requiring time, resources, and the ability to bring together diverse individuals around a common cause. That common cause is to build public support that will push elected decision-makers and other leaders in the community towards a set of desired outcomes. By developing and maintaining new power structures that include new stakeholders and new relationships, the new regime seeks to develop broad support for change (Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999; Saegert, 2006; Shirley, 1997; Stone, 2001; Stone, Henig, Jones, & Pierannunzi, 2001, p. 7; Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos, & Rutledge, 2007, pp. 12–13).

Regime Theory

21

Community or civic engagement to make change in local schools requires broad-­ based, sustained support from both a diverse set of actors inside the traditional ­education regime, including teachers, administrators, and elected officials who fund schools, and new, noneducation actors who understand the importance of high-­ quality schools from a broad range of community development perspectives including private actors, non-profit actors, parents, and others concerned with the community. Often the regime includes government actors from the community as well as officials from the state who may be called upon to establish enabling legislation if certain types of reforms are desired. The coalition must also respond to national priorities and may look to take advantage of national support for change when it is available. In the United States, education is primarily a local responsibility with the majority of funding raised at the local and state levels. Local school districts also have considerable discretion in terms of curriculum and other school matters. The states provide some funding and establish standards for performance, as does the federal government, though to a lesser degree than the state. This structure grants considerable authority to a small regime of local education “experts.” Those outside the education system who recognize the vital role schools play in societal development may choose to join the education establishment to build change from within or engage others outside the schools to form a new coalition to promote change from the outside when they believe the schools are failing to meet societal expectations.

Regime Theory Much of the analysis of this text draws on regime theory that evolved in the 1980s in the work of Stephen Elkin (1987) and Clarence Stone (1989) based on the work of Robert Dahl (1961), Richard Hunter (1953), Charles Lindblom (1977), and others concerned with pluralism and community power. While the pluralist perspective draws on a political culture approach and assumes government, with a popular mandate, is adequate to make and enact those policies promoted by popularly elected public officials (Banfield, 1961; Dahl, 1961), regime analysis draws on political economy and assumes a crucial role for nongovernment actors, particularly actors that control private investment assets (Elkin, 1987; Stone, 1989, 1993; Swanstrom, 1985). It assumes that in capitalistic countries, economic growth is paramount and that private business drives most market decision with government playing a limited supporting role. This division of labor between the state and the market leads to government/business collaboration for economic development (Davies, 2002). Elkin (1987) was concerned with structure and how structural arrangements create pressure for government and nongovernment actors to work together. He devised the notion of a commercial republic and the benefits it brings to society. A commercial republic must be subject to political decision-making, and it must offer liberty to individuals in society. Regimes can help guard against the loss of either of these critical values. The regime, be it national or local, is concerned with the set of arrangements that facilitate the division of labor between the governing state and the

22

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

ownership of productive assets which are largely held in the private sector. Stone (1989) was more practical, looking at local politics and how power differentials impacted decision-making. Each recognized that collaboration between government and nongovernment actors was necessary but was concerned with the privileged position of business. Regime analysis recognizes that cities are unique, with unique histories, different sets of stakeholders who have different priorities, different cultural influences, different resources available, and unique political structures. Actors each bring different sets of political and economic resources, different interests and priorities, and different alliances to the regime that comingle to form a coherent organization for persistent change. These differences and the way they manifest themselves within the larger community account for different regime priorities, challenges, and goals as well as the processes they engage in to achieve those goals (Shipps, 2003). Examples throughout this text illustrate how different regimes came together to organize for education change in cities throughout the United States. The regime model places great importance on the role of power within local governing arrangements. The ability of a broad set of actors from the public, private, and non-profit sectors as well as concerned citizens to band together and combine resources and power is essential and differentiates regime analysis from the traditional urban growth machine and its singular focus on growth and reliance on elite influencers to increase land values as machines compete with each other for investment (Holman, 2007). Stone (1989) differentiates the concepts of “power over” and “power to” and how this distinction generates regime formation and its use of power. For Stone, pure ideology has limited utility in local decision-making, and a regime built on a shared vision that leads to mutual dependence is able to achieve significantly more than possible if individual members acted out of their own self-interest. The collective “power to” act through cooperation and shared goals has much greater potential for success than the exertion of coercive “power over” others in the community. Regime analysis also assumes there is a division between the state (provision) and the market (production) and that economic forces play an important role in driving urban change (Imbroscio, 1998b; Stone, 1989). The role of the state in Western democracies, particularly in the United States, is limited primarily to a regulation framework with very little direct production of market goods and, therefore, requires a strong private market. Nongovernment actors are able to influence government action through collaborative arrangements or regimes due to the diffuse nature of power in democratic societies. This does not mean government is powerless. Local government and private business each possess resources needed to govern. Government maintains policy-making authority, while business controls capital needed for investments and job growth (Mossberger & Stoker, 2001). This division of labor then defines that regime analysis can incorporate the notion of public services treated as worthy goods. Savas (2000) describes worthy goods are goods and services that are so important that their consumption should be encouraged regardless of the consumer’s ability to pay. Government either provides these goods directly or subsidizes their provision by others, often private firms. Education

Regime Theory

23

clearly reaches this threshold as a government-subsidized basic education is widely recognized as essential to individual achievement and societal growth in the United States and in most countries throughout the world. There is nothing that requires government exclusively subsidize public education. Most nongovernmental colleges and universities are eligible for government funding through a variety of means. Students attending these schools are eligible for government-backed student loans and government-funded Pell grants, and their parents are eligible for the same tax credits for donations as they would be for donations to public universities. In many states, these same tax deductions may also apply to donations to K-12 schools be they government schools or nongovernment schools. The separation between the production of services and the provision of services is equivalent to the division of labor in regime theory. Noneducation government actors play a limited role in providing guaranteed funding and establishing rules and regulations for producers to follow; producers, be they public or nongovernment private or non-profit actors, effectively own and control the productive assets. While regime analysis is primarily concerned with the relationship between government actors and private business, worthy good analysis does not rely on the dichotomous relationship between government and business and creates space for a variety of producers. Much like any privatized traditionally public service, it also alters the economic relationship somewhat, decoupling funding and revenue generation from the provider side of the equation.

Managing Obstacles Central to sustained regime-based change is the ability to manage conflicts as they arise and be able to adapt to change as it occurs. Conflict may occur for a variety of reasons. Actors may have competing priorities that challenge the ability of certain items to reach or maintain priority status on the regime agenda. Others may disagree on the amount of resources needed or on the amount of resources they are willing to commit for change. There may also be disagreement on the specific reform items to pursue. The profit-driven motive of capitalism may lead to conflict between various regime actors who agree reform is necessary, but desire reform for different reasons. Some may view reform as necessary to maintain a qualified workforce or to prepare young people for advanced study. Others may see reforms as an extension of democratic values that value citizen participation and an informed electorate. These differences may lead to support for different solutions and an inability to reach a compromise. Unfortunately, due to disagreements over solutions and for other reasons, it is often much easier to ignore the need for change rather than disturb the status quo (Timoney, 2013). Change within the existing educational regime can be very difficult. Obstacles to such change include lack of resources, competition within the district among schools, overburdensome bureaucracy, misperceptions among organizations, and insufficient agreements among organizations and efforts by groups

24

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

such as teachers’ unions to protect their status and power (Cakmak & Gunduz, 2012). For any change to occur, it requires a sustained effort that is capable of overcoming substantial obstacles including competing interests, changing priorities, misperceptions of the problem, disagreements over the cause of failure, disagreements over solutions, distrust among coalition members, insufficient time, and insufficient resources (Cakmak & Gunduz, 2012; Cicmil, 1999; Timoney, 2013). Any one of these obstacles can prevent a coalition or regime from forming and sustaining through the change process and lead to problems being ignored. If the obstacles that prevent sustained cooperation are overcome and integrating the diverse political perspectives of various stakeholders around education is achieved, building civic capacity or what Wong et al. (2007) describe as “integrated governance” is possible and may contribute to a proposed solution for failing local schools.

Criticism of Regime Analysis Regime theory remains an important lens through which to measure local power arrangements, urban politics, the role of various actors, and how sustaining coalitions form around what are perceived to be problems within the local community. This does not mean the theory is free of criticism and modification since first introduced in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. Much of the criticism of regime analysis stems from what are perceived to be flaws in the theory, suggesting that the goals of greater democracy and of relieving inequality between the resource rich and the resource poor are not sustainable (Davies, 2002). Stone himself acknowledges that regime theory does not necessarily fit well as an explanatory model for political change, but serves to focus on the nature and composition of the governing coalition and asks how and why some issues rise to the top of the regime agenda while others do not (Stone, 1993, 2015). Stone describes regime analysis as a middle ground theory attempting to bridge the pluralists assumptions that the economy is but one of several distinct issue domains with the perspective of structuralists who consider the mode of production as the most important domain of activity (Stone, 1993). Stone and David Imbroscio, in a series of articles published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, debated the transformative nature of urban regime theory (Imbroscio, 1998a, 1998b, 2003, 2004; Stone, 1998b, 2004a, 2004c). Imbroscio offered a critique of regime theory that too little attention is paid to the shortcomings of corporate-­led economic growth strategies and that it fails to consider alternatives. Stones’ response is basically that yes there are alternative economic development strategies available but they are not especially viable and that Imbroscio fails to consider the political realities of the local governmental environment (Rast, 2005). A number of others have expressed criticism of regime analysis, at times offering their own suggestions to repair or replace regime theory. Joel Rast suggests that neither Stone nor Imbroscio offer empirical evidence to support their purported positions (Rast, 2005, 2015). He is equally critical of revisions made by Stone

Changing Regimes and a Diffuse Agenda

25

(2015) to regime theory that introduce periodization. While he writes that the ­periodization approach offers new areas of enquiry, it somewhat conflicts with the original perspective of regime theory by focusing on institutional conflict and change, rather than informal and stable arrangements among government and nongovernment actors. Others including Harding (1997), Lauria (1997), and Painter (1997) have suggested that the future of regime theory rests in its ability to meld with regulation theory (Davies, 2002). Mickey Lauria has criticized regime theory for its inability to move beyond its middle ground roots as it leaves the theory too heavily focused on politics and regime maintenance (Lauria, 1997). The political economy approach of regime analysis is also criticized for failing to consider issues surrounding economic development decisions including the negative impact on lower-income individuals, the cost of development incentives, the negative impacts on quality of life, and the limited scope of potential benefits to those acting as rational actors pursuing rational, investment strategies and seeking to avoid redistributive policies that hinder economic development (Lewis-Durham, 2015; Peterson, 1981).

Changing Regimes and a Diffuse Agenda Over time, regimes form, adjust, fade away, and reconstitute themselves in new and different ways through what Stone (2015) describes as periodization. These changes are the result of more diffuse governing arrangements and occur for a variety of external and internal reasons including new political power structures; changing local priorities that result from demographic, economic, or cultural changes; success or failure of previous regimes; or changing economic conditions that are the result of suburbanization, globalization, or other trends. The traditional redevelopment-­ based regime dominated American cities through the 1970s. Improving schools were largely left to government and traditional education actors who remained the near exclusive provider and producer of education services. Top-­ down efforts including civil rights legislation and court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) increased access and accountability, improved funding, and opened up governance, representativeness, and equality with the goal of improving outcomes. In many cities throughout the country, new coalitions formed around these and other efforts to encourage and sometimes force the implementation of education improvement efforts and a larger civil rights agenda within the community. The 1980s saw the beginning of new trends and a more diffuse agenda. Decades of urban decline including declining urban schools combined with the growth of affordable housing and higher-quality outer-ring suburban schools led to the postindustrial period which continues to this day (Stone, 2015). Governance became less cohesive as funding for federal programs to redevelop urban land and to support civil rights decreased in a new era of right leaning anti-tax politics. While economic development continued to dominate local regime politics in most cities, new regimes formed with new goals including those that focused on human capital development.

26

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

Rather than a single dominate regime, regimes existed at different levels within a three-dimensional space with influence at specific pivot points related to specific relevant issues. Rather than a near exclusive focus on economic development, other issues rose in importance, including education. Grassroots community leaders, often through aggressive and at times confrontational approaches, pushed a different, anti-development agenda. Other leading actors in the community soon realized that in a highly competitive space, high-­ quality services including public transit, parks, affordable housing, and schools can serve as a magnet for investment and growth in the same way as tax incentives serve to encourage investment. As those issues rose in importance, so did regimes and the leading actors in them. In 2004, Aaron Bartley led a movement for change after returning to his hometown of Buffalo New York. Bartley, who had recently finished in Harvard Law School, created a community development group to foster neighborhood development through a combination of direct action protesting and increased investment in blighted areas that had been ravaged by disinvestment and urban decay. The organization, known as PUSH, began operations in 2005 and organized a regime of mostly local grassroots actors around the need for change and more affordable quality housing. Through a combination of grassroots organizing and direct protesting, the regime was able to leverage political alliances from inside the community as well as from those outside the city to attract grants, public and private investment, and other partnerships to redevelop Buffalo through improved housing stock, efforts to attract new residents, and new job creation. PUSH’s efforts included investment in affordable housing construction and rehab, weatherization of existing housing stock, job training, and urban agriculture and resulted in more than $6 million of investment between 2008 and 2011 (Dreier, 2012). The diffuse nature of the urban agenda has led to a new framework with numerous types of regimes, all with different purposes and goal. The example in Buffalo demonstrates how diverse actors outside of government and business can organize for change, applying pressure to local and state government officials to invest in the local community. According to Stone (1993, 2015), and Stoker (1995), several attributes frame a regime and make it different than other types of governing coalitions. For a regime to be sustained, it requires a stable coalition that is able to provide proper resources; it almost always requires a nongovernment actor to be part of the governing regime; the regime is sustained through consultation and negotiation that allows it to adjust to changing conditions; and the regime requires resources appropriate for its agenda.

Regime Types Numerous literatures have attempted to qualify different regime typologies based on various characteristics such as goals or outcomes, political orientation, or roles of key actors. Different regime orientations have different priorities and different outcome goals as various actors may dominate the regime or actors with similar

Changing Regimes and a Diffuse Agenda

27

interests may cluster together. The makeup of the regime as well as the resources regime actors bring will significantly determine whose interests dominate, be it business interests or non-profit interests or another set of actors as well as what concerns reach the top of the regime agenda. Stone has identified four regime typologies including maintenance (caretaker) regimes, development regimes, middle-­ class progressive regimes, and lower-class opportunity expansion regimes (Stone, 1993). Each of these regimes has different sets of guiding values and goals and may be comprised of different sets of actors, reflecting Stones’ political economy approach. Maintenance or caretaker regimes are concerned with maintaining the status quo including basic services and the cost of government with an emphasis on lower taxes and limited elite involvement. Development regimes seek to promote growth and land use policies that lead to economic development by linking private investment to public action. Middle-class progressive regimes are concerned with environmental threats, preservation, and affordable housing and require a more engaged and active citizenry to maintain support for more progressive policies, while lower-class opportunity regimes, which Stone describes as “largely hypothetical” in the United States (Stone, 1993, p 20), seek access to employment and small business development. Lower-class opportunity regimes experience many of the same challenges as progressive regimes with the additional challenges that the primary beneficiaries of these regimes often lack political power (Mossberger & Stoker, 2001; Stone, 1993). Elkin (1987) identifies pluralist, federalist, and entrepreneurial regimes, rejecting the traditional perspective that equality and efficiency are opposites where one cannot be achieved without a loss to the other. Imbroscio (1998b) seeks to counter the tenets of the regime as constructed by Stone to consider alternative models that do not rely on traditional private market-based economic development strategies. He identifies regimes as community-based, which seeks to alter the traditional division of labor through a regime that includes community-based groups and their powerful allies in  local government; petty bourgeois regimes centered around a model that includes small local business and local public officials; or local-statist regimes which alter the division of labor between the state and market by including a significantly larger role for the state (Keiser, 2015; Rast, 2005). Both Imbroscio and Elkin seek to develop regime typologies that correct for what they and others see as a flaw in regime analysis reliance on a rigid conception of the division of labor (Imbroscio, 1998b). Other frameworks look at regimes from the perspective of the actors who comprise them and the agenda they pursue. Unlike the work of Imbroscio or Elkin who focus on the role of markets and the division of labor in regime formation, or Stone who applies political economy to regime creation, Dorothy Shipps (2003) looks specifically at local actor resources and the formation of new school governing regimes by identifying three regime typologies and reconfiguring a fourth regime based on the work of Clarence Stone. Performance regimes identify pedogeological issues and school culture as underlying sources for the desire for change. Traditional actors in the education regime include educators, unions, education academics along with parents, community organizations, and elected officials. Empowerment

28

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

regimes seek to expand or alter the regime to include new stakeholders including parents, business elites, and a great role for elected or appointed officials from outside the traditional education regime who bring new and additional resources and political legitimacy with the goal of introducing potentially innovative solutions untried or previously rejected by core education actors. Market regimes include the same basic core set of actors as empowerment regimes; however, the goal of market regimes is to introduce market-based reforms including entrepreneurial education practices such as greater school choice and a focus on efficiency. The final regime typology discussed by Shipps expands on employment regimes introduced by Stone. Employment regimes represent the status quo and a period of stabilization with relatively little change in the existing system. Under such regimes, whose primary actors include teachers, teacher unions, faculty from schools of education at nearby universities, boards of education, administration, and others who support the administration of the schools, the values espoused by reformers are institutionalized and accepted as normal practice of educating students (Lewis-Durham, 2015; Shipps, 2003). Jill Clark (2001) in her analysis of local developmental policies identified six different regime typologies based on achieving efficiency and equity. They include entrepreneurial regimes, caretaker regimes, player regimes, progressive regimes, stewardship regimes, and demand side regimes. Entrepreneurial regimes concentrate of economic development and the unique alliance between business and government. Much like Shipps employment regimes, caretaker regimes seek to maintain the status quo and minimize the role and size of government investment in new potentially risky development. Player regimes are populist base and feature active government involvement to coerce business to engage in supportive community building in exchange for government support and resources. Progressive regimes are most concerned with economic equity and demand side policies and include community action organizations, public interests, and the elite business class. Stewardship regimes seek to protect local investments through formal processes including clawback provisions and performance requirements set forth in contracts that are able to control growth and reduce the risks to taxpayers. The final regime typology discussed by Clark, demand side regimes, tends to focus on neighborhood revitalization and small business creations and may include an alliance between progressives and minority interests (Clark, 2001).

Regime Typology and Urban Schools As demonstrated here, the traditional political economy perspective developed by Stone (Stone, 1989, 1993, 2004b, 2005, 2015) that assumes local government must court business interests in order to secure a strong local economic base that guarantees incoming tax revenue and secure employment for local residents has been challenged by those who question the legitimacy of these assertations. Rather than quibble over the relevancy of the market as the principle guiding force in local gov-

Regime Typology and Urban Schools

29

ernance, it can be safely assumed that regardless of the regime typology, to sustain itself, a community needs a stable base of resources, and under some formulation, in democratic societies, it relies are a shared responsibility between the state and non-state actors. The actors within the regime, their resources, and their commitment to regime goals will determine the available resources and thus the sustainability of the regime. For the purposes here, rather than a deliberate and exclusive focus on the role of the market and the division of labor between public and private stakeholders, and without ignoring the significant and practical role non-state actors play in local development decisions, regimes can be classified by overarching goal. The focus on goals creates space for local history, culture, economic conditions, environmental concerns, and political structures without creating artificial boundaries or archetypes for different sets of actors and the goals they may be expected to pursue. It is also able to account for the periodization affect described by Stone (2015). To accommodate these concerns and preserve the importance of the regime for moving local community decision-making forward, regimes can be loosely divided into four typologies: market or economic development regimes, community development regimes, caretaker or status quo regimes, and protectionist regimes. These typologies do not reflect a progressive increase on the influence of certain actors as other approaches may suggest such as Stone (1989, 1993, 1998a) or the measure of efficiency or equity of Clark (2001), but rather the overarching objectives of the leading actors in the regime and their commitment of resources to attain regime goals. This removes the many assumptions that are made regarding actor role and priorities. For example, it is reasonable to assume that private actors are going to be concerned with markets; however, that does not mean they will not prioritize good schools or a clean environment as those also can lead to improved profitability. This also opens a wider door for non-traditional groups who may have lacked voice such as immigrants to organize for change as part of a larger regime and creates a space to consider public good through the lens of worthy goods. In comparing this framework to others discussed here, the market or economic regime, which would be viewed as the traditional economic development regime, would be comparable to the development regime of Stone or the petty bourgeois typology of Imbroscio, the entrepreneurial regime of Clark, or the market regime of Shipps. Market regimes seek to take advantage of economic opportunities within the community by promoting private investment and collaborations between government and other interests. The traditional outcome of these regimes has been private-­public collaborations that lead to jobs and additional local tax revenue. Other issues, such as affordability and environmental sustainability, can be important regime goals, but have generally been ignored. Justice, human rights, the environment, and other social issues, including high-quality schools, are now high on the agenda in most cities, and leadership cannot ignore them in the name of economic growth as they may have in the past. Despite the threats posed by globalization and the mobility of human capital, private elites from within the business community are often engaged in school change and will raise education as an important agenda item in the market regime.

30

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

Not only are private business actors parents of children in the local schools, but they often hire graduates of the schools. A market regime may pursue any form of education change, but may see as a goal structural change including greater school choice as a means of improving the quality of local schools to increase the talent pool of future employees or as a means to attract human capital or additional private investment. In Chap. 10, this text will discuss the role of business in driving change in Chicago, Illinois, in the late 1980s and 1990s as a means of securing qualified employees. Community development regimes take a broader perspective on growth, looking beyond simple job creation and new tax revenue towards quality of life issues including affordable housing, environmental issues, justice, and equality. Access to good jobs and other economic interests are also important drivers of change for community development regimes, however, not at the exclusion of other non-­ economic interests. Education is often a leading agenda item for community development regimes as was the case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1990s. Grassroots groups often drive change with allies in government, the non-profit sector, and the faith community. Community development education regimes may or may not include traditional education actors depending on the type of change sought, although educational actors may be less likely to support drastic structural changes often sought by community development regimes that may introduce greater school choice and prefer smaller-scale incremental changes to the existing system. Stones’ middle-class progressive regime and lower-class opportunity regime would be comparable to the community development regime, as would the community-based regime of Imbroscio and the progressive and demand side regimes of Clark. Caretaker regimes are closely associated with efforts to maintain the status quo and are comparable to maintenance regimes of Stone, performance and employment regimes of Shipps, and caretaker regimes of Clark. These regimes are not necessarily looking for new opportunities or actively engaged in change, but they value sustained commitments and maintaining the regime in order to sustain existing programs and policies. These regimes may often seem invisible as there is not an aggressive public call for change. However, much work is done behind the scenes to maintain progress on gains already made. Education caretaker regimes may seek to maintain current programming, assuming satisfactory progress can be demonstrated to the public, parents, and elected decision-makers. If progress cannot be demonstrated or calls for drastic change increase, the caretaker regime may shift to a more protectionist framework Protectionist regimes are not only concerned with the status quo but will engage in activities to avoid loss of position or power and to protect themselves against perceived threats. Traditional education regimes that include teachers, unions, and education academic elite may organize protectionist regimes to deflect or prevent threats from outside actors including members of market or community development regimes as well as other government actors or the courts when schools are perceived to have failed to provide a quality education. They may also seek out support from non-traditional education actors with resources that can be used to counter calls for significant change including change that could alter the fundamental

References

31

structure of local education. Imbroscio’s local-statist regimes as well as Clark’s player and stewardship regimes would have similar goals. This regime framework addresses some of the concerns expressed by critiques of regime analysis that it fails to consider alternatives to corporate-led economic development growth strategies. Regimes organize for different purposes and may pursue more than one goal at a time. For example, a community-based regime for school improvement may also pursue goals that improve economic growth opportunities in much the same way a market-based regime can seek change in schools as a means to improve economic development opportunities. Sustained change for improved access to affordable housing and other social needs under community-based regimes addresses concerns that critiques of regime analysis express about the sustainability of efforts to relieve inequality. Regime analysis begins with the assumption that the market is preeminent. The framework presented here does not disregard that premise, but creates space for measurements beyond the simple bottom line of profits over losses. The realities of money and politics cannot be ignored, particularly in the local environment; however, caretaker and community-based regimes can be used to explain efforts that consider the environmental impact and access to housing and other services when considering development decisions. Protectionist regimes can be useful to better explain efforts to limit development, including radical efforts including political organizing and protesting. The focus of this chapter has been to define urban regime analysis and place urban theory in the local context regarding school reform. Criticism of urban regime theory has been discussed, and an alternative perspective has been developed. The next chapter shall apply the regime theory typology developed here to urban school reform, considering the role of actors at the local, state, and national level, how politics impacts regimes, and how changes in federal priorities have impacted local decision-making.

References Banfield, E. C. (1961). Political influence: A new theory of urban politics. New York: Free Press. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 347 US 483. (1954). In. Cakmak, E., & Gunduz, H. B. (2012). Obstacles to change in educational organization and methods to overcome these obstacles: Views of principals. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 4436–4440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.270 Cicmil, S. (1999). Implementing organizational change projects: Impediments and gaps. Strategic Change, 8(2), 119–129. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1697(199903/04)8:23.0.CO;2-1 Clark, J. (2001). Six urban regime types: The effects of state laws and citizen participation on the development of alternative regimes. Public Administration Quarterly, 25(1), 3. Dahl, R. (1961). Who governs?: Democracy and power in an American city. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Davies, J.  S. (2002). Urban regime theory: A normative-empirical critique. Journal of Urban Affairs, 24(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9906.00111 Dreier, P. (2012). Rust belt radicals: Community organizing in Buffalo. New Labor Forum, 21(2), 100.

32

2  The Urban Regime and City Schools: Building Change

Elkin, S. L. (1987). City and regime in the American Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harding, A. (1997). Coalition formation and urban redevelopment: A cross-national study. Retrieved from Seindon, UK. Henig, J. R., Hula, R. C., Orr, M., & Pedescleaux, D. S. (1999). The color of school reform: Race, politics, and the challenge of urban education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Holman, N. (2007). Following the signs: Applying urban regime analysis to a UK case study. Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(5), 435–453. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2007.00359.x Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study of decision makers. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Imbroscio, D. L. (1998a). The necessity of urban regime change: A reply to Clarence n. Stone. Journal of Urban Affairs, 20(3), 261. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.1998.tb00422.x Imbroscio, D.  L. (1998b). Reformulating urban regime theory: The division of labor between state and market reconsidered. Journal of Urban Affairs, 20(3), 233. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.1998.tb00420.x Imbroscio, D. L. (2003). Overcoming the neglect of economics in urban regime theory. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25(3), 271–284. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9906.00165 Imbroscio, D.  L. (2004). The imperative of economics in urban political analysis: A reply to Clarence n. Stone. Journal of Urban Affairs, 26(1), 21–26. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0735-2166.2004.00002.x Keiser, R. (2015). Urban regime change: A silver lining for scandals. Urban Affairs Review, 51(4), 504–532. http://uar.sagepub.com/content/by/year Lauria, M. (1997). Introduction. In M. Lauria (Ed.), Reconstructing urban regime theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lewis-Durham, T.  C. (2015). Evading equity: Principal autonomy under the Bloomberg-Klein market regime. eJEP: eJournal of Education Policy, 1. Lindblom, C. E. (1977). Politics and markets: The world’s political-economic system. New York: Basic Books. Mossberger, K., & Stoker, G. (2001). The evolution of urban regime theory: The challenge of conceptualization. Urban Affairs Review, 36(6), 810–835. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185109 Painter, J. (1997). Regulation, regime, and practice in urban politics. In M. Lauria (Ed.), Reconstructing urban regime theory: Regulating urban politics in a global economy (pp. 122–143). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Peterson, P. E. (1981). City limits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rast, J. (2005). The politics of alternative economic development: Revisiting the Stone-Imbroscio debate. Journal of Urban Affairs, 27(1), 53. Rast, J. (2015). Urban regime theory and the problem of change. Urban Affairs Review, 51(1), 138–149. http://uar.sagepub.com/content/by/year Saegert, S. (2006). Building civic capacity in urban neighborhoods: An empirically grounded anatomy. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28(3), 275. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2006.00292.x Savas, E.  S. (2000). Privatization and public private partnerships. New  York: Chatham House Publishers. Shipps, D. (2003). Pulling together: Civic capacity and urban school reform. American Educational Research Journal, 40(4), 841. Shirley, D. (1997). Community organizing for urban school reform. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Stoker, G. (1995). Regime theory and urban politics. In D. Judge, G. Stoker, & H. Wolman (Eds.), Theories of urban politics (pp. 54–71). London: Sage. Stone, C. N. (1989). Regime politics: Governing Atlanta 1946–1988. Lawrence, KS: University of kansas Press. Stone, C. N. (1993). Urban regimes and the capacity to govern. Journal of Urban Affairs, 15, 1–28. Stone, C. N. (1998a). Civic capacity and urban school reform. In C. N. Stone (Ed.), Changing urban education (pp. 270–271). Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

References

33

Stone, C.  N. (1998b). Regime analysis and the study of urban politics, a rejoinder. Journal of Urban Affairs, 20(3), 249. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.1998.tb00421.x Stone, C. N. (2001). Civic capacity and urban education. Urban Affairs Review, 36(5), 595. https:// doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185019 Stone, C. N. (2004a). It’s more than the economy after all: Continuing the debate about urban regimes. Journal of Urban Affairs, 26(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0735-2166.2004.0001.x Stone, C. N. (2004b). Mayors and the challenge of modernization. In J. R. Henig & W. C. Rich (Eds.), Mayors in the middle: Politics, race, and mayoral control of urban schools (pp. 232– 248). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stone, C.  N. (2004c). Rejoinder: Multiple imperatives, or some thoughts about governance in a loosely coupled but stratified society. Journal of Urban Affairs, 26(1), 35–42. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0735-2166.2004.0004.x Stone, C. N. (2005). Looking back to look forward. Urban Affairs Review, 40(3), 309–341. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1078087404270646 Stone, C. N. (2015). Reflections on regime politics: From governing coalition to urban political order. Urban Affairs Review, 51(1), 101–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087414558948 Stone, C. N., Henig, J. R., Jones, B. D., & Pierannunzi, C. (2001). Building civic capacity: The politics of reforming urban schools. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. Swanstrom, T. (1985). The crisis of growth politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Timoney, J. (2013). Commentary: Force of personality meets force of reality: Bureaucratic obstacles to change. Public Administration Review, 73(2), 240. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12014 Wong, K.  K., Shen, F.  X., Anagnostopoulos, D., & Rutledge, S. (2007). Improving America’s schools: The education mayor. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Chapter 3

Community Engagement and the Education Regime

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results –Henry Melvill (1854)

Abstract  Community engagement involves developing broad support for change, often through new power structures that bring together diverse sets of actors in new relationships and a shared goal. This coalition or regime of actors works together with a shared interest and exerts collective power to make change in the community. This chapter examines how local regimes act when government fails to achieve accountability, responsiveness, and equality for all and change is needed. Three distinct interventions are possible: (1) they may seek to avoid change, minimize the problem, and maintain the status quo, (2) the problem grows worse and intervention is mandated from higher levels of government, or (3) local actors may seek to implement change from the bottom up to better control the outcome of reform. Different responses in different locations are analyzed. Keywords  Regime · State takeover · Status quo · Accountability · Responsiveness · Equality · Pittsburgh · Boston · Market · Community development · Economic development

Engaging others within the community to enact change is fundamental to societies across the globe. Developing the capacity to enact change may involve overcoming significant challenges, particularly in authoritarian regimes; however, as history has taught us, even in authoritarian regimes, such as those in the former Soviet

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Guo-Brennan, Community Engagement for Better Schools, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54038-8_3

35

36

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

Union, and, more recently, in the protest movement in Hong Kong, active citizen engagement can lead to extraordinary change. In America, active citizen engagement led to a revolution and an end to British rule. Civic engagement, which is also described by a number of terms including civic capacity, community building, or community organizing, is the source of most significant change in democratic countries (Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999; Saegert, 2006; Shirley, 1997; Stone, 2001; Stone, Henig, Jones, & Pierannunzi, 2001; Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos, & Rutledge, 2007). It brought women the right to vote and spawned the civil rights movement. Community engagement involves developing broad support for change, often through new power structures that bring together diverse sets of actors in new relationships and a shared goal. This coalition or regime of actors works together with a shared interest and exerts collective power to make change in the community. Acting individually, they may lack power to make change; however, unified under the singular goal of the regime, they are able to push through an agenda for community-­wide change. Expanding on the pluralist perspective about power in the work of Dahl (1961), Hunter (1953), and Lindblom (1959), Elkin (1987), Stone (1989), and others argue that economic growth dominates the local agenda and that real, sustained change requires support from nongovernment actors, particularly those that control private assets. While regimes designed to encourage development have dominated local governance for decades, it is possible for other issues related to local development to gain importance within the urban agenda. Among the most common items to top the local agenda is public education. In most locations, public schools are financed largely through local tax collections. Governance occurs at the local level, and decisions are made by local, sometimes elected, sometimes appointed officials. The quality of schools has a direct impact on the community in many ways. It impacts housing values and the ability to secure employment or obtain post-secondary college or university and can be an indicator about the value of the community as a place to live (Kane, Staiger, & Riegg, 2004; Seo & Simons, 2009). The importance of education, as a means to increase opportunity and decrease difference, requires that the government secures access for all, that it provides appropriate funding, and that it guarantees public governance so that those who attend and provide the tax revenue that funds local education have a voice in how those dollars are spent. Failure to do so leads to local actors demanding change; it fuels the rise of civic engagement and can lead to dramatic changes in how local schools operate. Government guarantee of public access, funding, and governance to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality has been the cornerstone of American public education for centuries. The American model, an extension of early European models, which, by emphasizing free public education for all, surpassed European schools in size and complexity, and contributed to the rise of the United States to become the most industrialized nation in the history by 1900, has been copied throughout the world (Ravitch, 2000; Tyack, 1974).

Failure to Guarantee Accountability, Responsiveness, and Equality

37

 ailure to Guarantee Accountability, Responsiveness, F and Equality The nature of American education relies on local control, including local g­ overnance and local sourced revenue. This design should guarantee accountability, representativeness, and equality; however, it does not always achieve such lofty goals. When this occurs, when local school governments fail to meet their responsibilities, three distinct possible interventions may result. (1) Education fails to capture the attention of the local agenda and no corrective action is taken by local officials and the problems and failures are either ignored altogether or minimized by the status quo regime, in which case it is likely that the problems will metastasize and spread as the regime seeks to downplay the significance of the issues. (2) The problems persist, yet they fail to capture the attention of dominant actors, eventually recognized as a crisis affecting all public school, leading to mandated change from the state or national government. (3) Local actors recognize problems either independently or in response to higher government mandates, and, if civic capacity is strong, the regime shall seek to implement locally driven and controlled reforms.

Maintaining the Status Quo Unless one is impacted by the failure of the schools, it is unlikely problems will be recognized or that self-directed meaningful change will be implemented. The community may lack civic capacity or strong actors within the dominant regime concerned with schools. This can be a special problem when economic and racial differences divide the governing elite from the governed. Those in power, who never experience the negative outcomes of policies because they are economically or culturally insulted, and therefore fail to recognize problems exist, or who deliberately minimize the negative consequences of bad policy, seek to maintain the existing systems and structures to assure their continued access to power and benefits it brings. Therefore, the lack of accountability, representativeness, and equality, which, in many cases, is deliberate, goes unrecognized and unchallenged, therefore leading to continued bad and unjust policies. The ability of those with power to access information, resources, and networks to others with power and the capacity to control those resources have been used to limit access, funding, and participation in the governance of public institutions including schools for decades. Those in power have the most capacity to engage the community and are often able to set the agenda. It resulted in schools that were segregated in almost all American cities through most of the twentieth century. White students attended well-funded and well-maintained schools in middle-class neighborhoods with access to the most up-to-date resources and best teachers, while black students often attended schools in lower-income neighborhoods that were often in disrepair, with often out-of-date or incomplete materials, if they had

38

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

any at all. The governing authority, usually a locally elected school board, typically lacked economic and racial diversity, and therefore these disparities often went ignored, despite protests from the minority communities most impacted by the lack of resources. Failure to recognize these issues and the deliberate practice of excluding black students from attending white schools grew in national importance in the 1950s and 1960s. As racial tensions grew in cities throughout America, the deliberate lack of access to high-quality schools, the intentional lack of funding to black schools, and the limited ability of minority leaders to participate in school governance became a national issue and led to the now infamous USSC decision Brown vs Board of Education (Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S., 1954). This ruling, which established that educational facilities which divided children by race were inherently unequal and that the separate-but-equal doctrine that had guided public policy for over five decades violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, directly led to a series of legally imposed top-down mandates on states and local school districts.

Mandated Top-Down Change Persistent problems that go unrecognized or deliberately disregarded will likely grow into larger problems that eventually cannot be ignored. Eventually, they will reach a place of importance on the agenda, the community will take notice, community members will engage in efforts to respond, and change will occur. As the civil rights movement demonstrated, even those issues that may not be recognized as problems by those in power but are viewed as failing to meet the democratic values of accountability, representativeness, and equality by others will need to be addressed as those feeling left out grow more vocal in their displeasure. This often leads to court action and legally imposed mandates from outside the community that force school leadership to change. When courts hand down decisions such as in Brown, school districts are obligated to comply, and the issue becomes important on the local agenda. There is little room for negotiation, and the governing regime is required to follow legal mandates, particularly when handed down from the USSC and other federal courts, regardless of the capacity to make meaningful change. In order to facilitate desegregation, in the 1960s and 1970s, federal courts frequently ordered school districts to develop plans that included busing students away from their neighborhood school in order to achieve racial equality in individual schools. Despite this, some schools, including schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in Boston, openly defied court rulings or were slow to comply with the law (Delmony, 2016). The Brown ruling also inspired others such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to call for equality in all areas of public life. On December 1, 1955, Ms Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for disorderly conduct when she refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger. In many cities across the country, white parents and black parents both protested forced busing as a means to ensure equal access (Barnes, 2005; Delmony, 2016).

Failure to Guarantee Accountability, Responsiveness, and Equality

39

The federal courts are not the only access point to ensure access, funding, and governance. Persistent mismanagement and failure may lead a state government to intervene in local school affairs through a court order to essentially take control of the local school district. In recent years, state governments have assumed control over districts in Allendale County (South Carolina), Detroit Michigan, Little Rock Arkansas, Montgomery Alabama, New Orleans (pre-Katrina), Memphis Tennessee, Providence Rhode Island, and elsewhere. This typically occurs due to significant and continued poor performance or financial mismanagement. Unlike court rulings that require local governing boards to make changes in policies and practices, the state, through a court order, takes over managing the schools. This action assumes there is a lack of capacity for community engagement for school change. This changes the relationship between the schools and the public, as public governance has been replaced by a court or court designee who is a nonelected official (or officials) who do not answer to the local community. In many cases, the elected school board is dissolved leaving no local control of the district. While this is seen as a drastic measure, and one that does not come without a lengthy process in which the district is given ample opportunities to make changes and avoid a state takeover, it may open up a window of opportunity for local actors to organize a regime to influence the future of local education. In addition to court-ordered change or a dissolution of the local school government by the state, an additional mandated intervention that may be imposed on districts by the state or national government is less draconian but no less significant and involves legislation demanding new policies and programs for general performance improvement or to improve access and funding to achieve greater accountability, representativeness, and equality. While court-ordered change is directed at schools by a judge or a court of judges, and a takeover by the state may originate in the governor’s office or state department of education, changes in education law are determined by the elected legislature and, therefore, may provide space for interpretation as the new laws are implemented or may allow for greater stakeholder input before legislation is enacted. While these efforts at the national level are not generally targeted at specific locations, or specific school districts, their impact is felt mostly at the local level, and local actors are charged with responding to these new mandates. This may lead to increased civic engagement and greater civic capacity. Major federal legislation that has had significant impact on local schools includes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002, and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. These will be discussed in detail in Chaps. 6 and 7. At the state level, education policy is a critical issue that has direct impact on families and school districts. In every state, the state constitution includes language that outlines the responsibilities of the legislature in education policy. A majority of the state constitutions (26) also outline formal authority for the governor, and 41 states provide for a formal role for the governor in education through legislation. This can include authority to take over local schools if they are perceived to be chronically mismanaged. The legislature has a role in appointing or confirming the chief state school official or state board of education in 43 states (Railey, 2017).

40

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

In addition to general administration of state school policy, legislatures impose a variety of regulations and requirements on local schools to better assure access, funding, and governance to achieve accountability, representativeness, and equality. States impose minimum performance standards for a school to be considered proficient based on standardized testing. These results are now required and must be reported to the federal government under ESSA. Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia maintain minimum statewide high school graduation standards. The remaining three states leave requirements to the local district, but have recommended requirements for graduation (Macdomald, Zinth, & Pompelia, 2019). States also determine the structure and governance of schools, including structures that allow for parental choice. There are a variety of parental choice options available in the different states including open enrollment, charter schools, vouchers, and various tax credits and other incentives that encourage parents to take a more active role in their child’s education choices.

Voluntary Bottom-Up Change The third intervention type that may or may not be driven by calls for change from higher levels of government is the locally driven bottom-up reform in response to a perceived need for change. Regimes may play an important role in bottom-up reform, as their action may be an effort to control the outcome of reform in response to a threat from the state, or policy changes from the state or federal government, or it may be a proactive engagement to capitalize on new opportunities that result from changing local conditions, new potential funding streams, or legislative changes that encourage certain types of behavior (Harris & Larsen, 2019; Holman, 2007; Ledyaev & Chirikova, 2019; Mossberger & Stoker, 2001; Shipps, 2003; Ziafati Bafarasat, 2018). New opportunities or threats, including threats to local school autonomy, may cause new regimes to form or may lead to education rising to a place of important within the existing regime. In cities including Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, local stakeholders respond to chronically poor-performing schools and the threats of outside intervention organized around school reform to push certain regime agendas through the state legislature (Blanc & Simon, 2007; Egler & Thomas, 1988; Gold, Simon, Cucchiara, Metchell, & Riffer, 2007; Milwaukee’s schools: Polly’s plan, 1990; Ogintz, 1988). Voluntary bottom-up reforms may include demands for greater parental choice and policies that require schools to compete as a means to encourage self-­ improvement. The different states each offer different choice opportunities for parents. Some offer multiple-choice options, while other states offer very few. These options may include open enrollment, charter schools, vouchers, and various tax credits and other incentives to parents for education-related expenses and to business for donations to education causes including scholarships and to individual schools.

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

41

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology Regime analysis assumes that a sustained coalition of diverse actors, with sufficient resources, is able to organize around shared interests and goals to capitalize on or generate civic capacity by engaging the community to create change. The actors within the regime, their resources, and their commitment to regime goals will determine the level of civic engagement, the available resources, and thus the sustainability of the regime. While traditional regime analysis has centered around business and government coalitions to drive change to promote economic development, there is evidence to support regime-based change in other areas as well, including education reform. Based on the framework of typologies outlined in the previous chapter that applies regime analysis based on overarching regime goals, it is possible to match the proposed interventions with specific types of regimes. By focusing on regime goals in the analysis, it is possible to account for local history and culture, current economic conditions, broader community concerns including environmental concerns, and political structures. The four typologies applied here focus on overarching objectives of coalition actors and the resources they bear to reach regime goals. They include market or economic development regimes, community development regimes, caretaker or status quo regimes, and protectionist regimes. The decision to maintain the status quo and do nothing requires little effort from the existing regime. Civic capacity may be low or may be high, but there is little interest in promoting change. It is only when problems persist and local school regimes are forced to address delinquencies as a result of mandated change either from above or from competing local regimes that action may be taken. This next section focuses on each typology and its application to school change.

Reform Through Mandated Change Top-down, mandated change from the courts or as a result of state takeover requires local officials to follow a prescribed prescription to achieve an outcome the existing regime has been unable or unwilling to achieve. The status quo regime, which seeks to avoid change, and which may have been the existing regime, has no place in this environment. As will be discussed below, court-ordered change may lead the status quo regime to transition into a protectionist regime, aggressively fighting proposed changes, while a state takeover may effectively end the regime or create space for a new regime to assume dominance. The ability for actors to engage the community will depend on numerous factors including the source of the mandates, the expected change that has been mandated, the capacity of local officials to implement change, and the political will to respond to mandates.

42

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

Reform Through Legally Imposed Court Decisions Regimes organize either in reaction to calls for change from outside the community or in response to perceived problems within the community. The source that inspires change can have a significant impact on how the community responds, the type of regime that forms, and the agenda items pursued. Legally imposed court decisions generally require that the community respond in some fashion. The presumption is that the status quo is not acceptable; therefore, it is unlikely that caretaker/status quo regimes will be useful. The traditional urban regime focused on economic development and land use lacks sufficient power to overcome court-ordered change. Historically, this regime may not be significantly involved in local schools; however, it is impacted by the quality of schools and would be impacted by new government mandates such as desegregation required by the Brown decision. Failure for the education regime to develop plans to meet federal requirements has inspired local business regimes to engage in school improvement in several cities including Pittsburgh and Boston; therefore, market- and community-based regimes may have some success in influencing outcomes (Catone, Friedman, McAlister, Potochnik, & Thompson, 2014; Jones, Portz, & Stein, 1997). Following a court order, the school district will be expected to present a plan or otherwise show how it is meeting new federal mandates. If civic capacity is high, and there is a high level of engagement favoring no change, this can lead to significant resistance from traditional education actors in the form of a protectionist regime that may have evolved from the long-standing status quo education regime. Members of this regime may include elected officials charged with governing the schools, teachers (and teacher unions), administrators, parents, and possibly leaders in the business community. If civic engagement is high, and there is support for the idea that local schools are failing, a community-based regime may organize seeking to comply with federal law and in many cases support greater accountability, representativeness, and equality. While this may not be a pre-existing coalition, the new coalition may spring from an existing coalition of community groups to include leaders from the faith community, parents, and other stakeholders concerned with fairness and justice. The court ruled in Brown that the process of desegregating schools would fall to federal district courts and that schools should integrate with “all deliberate speed.” Those who opposed integration collaborated with local community groups such as the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberty, organized in 1954, shortly after the Brown ruling, to resist, delay, and avoid serious efforts through what became known as Massive Resistance, a campaign led by US Senator Harry F. Bird of Virginia (Civil Rights Movement in Virginia, n.d.; Daugherity, 2014). In response to a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals that ordered the state to fully fund integrated schools, the state legislature repealed mandatory attendance laws and made schools optional for local governments. Local actors were free to provide and produce the education they wanted, as long as it met federal guidelines, or to produce no education at all. In 1959, rather than integrate, a protectionist

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

43

regime led by the school board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed all public schools and provided vouchers for children to attend private schools. The private schools, for whom Brown did not apply, were free to accept whoever they wished, and most did not accept black children. In 1964, the USSC ruled in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 (1964), that the decision to provide assistance to white students but making no accommodation for black students who were unable to attend private school violated the equal protection clause and was unconstitutional, ordering the schools to reopen (Civil Rights Movement in Virginia, n.d.). The decision to close the entire school system by the county school board rather than integrate demonstrates the power of the local regime which included elected officials to push through an agenda in the state legislature designed to resist desegregation. Despite widespread support to remain segregated, others in the community called for an end to the resistance. A typical example of those in support of integration comes from Ainslee B. Dohme and Alvin R. L. Dohme of Front Royal Virginia to Maurice Bowen of the Warren County Board of Supervisors which governs the county school system (Dohme & Dohme, 1959). On February 25, 1959, they wrote: …We feel that the mental equilibrium and education of the young hereabouts have been sacrificed unduly already for the personal expression of rebellion against the U.S. Supreme Court and perhaps racial prejudice as well. It is high time thought of normalcy and routine for our young…This is not basically an issue of segregation…. It is a matter of the future generation of our local citizens. To hamstring our children for pride and prejudice and to fall for the easy flattery of neighboring communities is traitorous folly and failure in our civic responsibilities…

The pro-integration coalition faced fierce resistance from those who sought to maintain the segregationist past of Virginia, which excluded not only black students but also indigenous populations. Although the regimes on both sides of these cases are not the typical economic-based regime, they represent the historical, cultural, political, and broader concerns of community members. The resistance movement, represented by Senator Bird, pushed back against a changing attitudinal tide sweeping across Virginia and America at the time. That tide, though slow to break through the sands of time, was growing in power as citizens began to recognize the need for change, even when state and local officials often failed to do so. More and more citizens took notice of the governing regime and began to express their displeasure with elected officials at the local and state levels who sought to maintain the status quo of segregated schools. Eventually, segregation in Virginia ended, largely as a result of court rulings, pressure from the federal government, and growing civic engagement in opposition to segregation from community-based coalitions. The battle for integration took place in many states throughout America, but was especially brutal in the South. The clash between the past of the future was played out with the help of an active citizenry on both sides. The protectionist regime included many elected officials and newly organized groups such as the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, while a community development-based regime included new community-based actors seeking to comply with federal law and increase

44

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

accountability, representativeness, and equality. These coalitions, represented by community groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose local and state chapters were supported by the national organization, parents, and other concerned citizens, became sustained regimes that continued to engage the community to promote social change in education and other areas of public life (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 347 US 483, 1954; Daugherity, 2014). Pittsburgh: Business-Backed Community Development Regime While direct opposition to mandated change may not be as severe as occurred in Virginia and other parts of the South in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there are times when the local education regime is unable to develop a plan to meet federal mandates. This can lead to efforts by the business elite or other regime actors to forge a solution. In 1968, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission ordered the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) to submit a plan to desegregate the schools. This led to years of unsuccessful efforts and rejected plans that resulted in a class action lawsuit against the district in 1978. The inability of the education regime to develop a plan created space for the business elite to enter the debate over desegregation. By engaging a broad coalition of actors, and with the help of strong leadership in the superintendent’s office, they were able to develop consensus around a plan that passed the school board and would integrate the schools in 1980 (Guide to the Pittsburgh School Desegregation Project Records, n.d.; Jones et  al., 1997; Reid, 2018). Unfortunately, the state rejected the plan, and many parents were also unhappy as it relied heavily on busing. Despite this, the plan went into effect in the fall of 1980. Soon the district began to see drastic declines in enrollment as whites fled to the suburbs and the steel industry began to collapse. Over the next 15 years, the PPS continued to use busing as a major strategy to equalize access to schools, and both black and white parents continued to complain and call for change. A dwindling tax base and frequently raucous school board meetings where parents argued about busing and access to good schools crippled the PPS. Finally, in 1995, the board decided it needed to take action, but again failed when 800 parents showed up at a school board meeting to air their grievances. At the state capital in Harrisburg, the role and authority of the Human Rights Commission was beginning to be questioned. A year later, in 1996, 28 years after the district was mandated to desegregate, the governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge, signed into law a bill that ended mandated busing as a means to end desegregation; this effectively ended desegregation in Pittsburgh. Despite success in leading efforts to develop a plan to integrate the schools that was able to gain enough support with the school board, and despite strong leadership from within the school system, the regime comprised of business elites and school administrators was not able to deflate distrust and animosity among parents who did not support the plan to integrate the schools. This suggests that successful regime change in highly controversial areas such as desegregation of the schools,

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

45

which often lacks a common understanding and where historical barriers centered around racism and discrimination are high, needs strong support from the broader community and that change within the schools should be matched with change within the larger community (Guide to the Pittsburgh School Desegregation Project Records, n.d.; Jones et al., 1997; Reid, 2018). Boston: A Market-Based Economic Development Regime Much like Pittsburgh, Boston had a long history or racial tensions, and the public schools were eventually under a court order to desegregate when the corporate regime sought to intervene to develop a solution. The business regime in Boston, known as the Vault, which had the capacity to act, largely ignored problems in the schools until 1982, deliberately avoiding controversies over desegregation and busing. Although outright resistance to busing had largely subsided, many in the community were not happy with the Boston schools. Growing calls for engagement led the Vault to join the regime to develop consensus and a solution. In response, the Vault established the Boston Compact, a coalition of business and public school interests. Soon institutions of higher education and the Boston building and trades unions joined the Compact. The parties agreed that the school system would work to improve the quality of the schools and learning outcomes and, in return, member businesses, colleges and universities, and organized labor would provide opportunities to access post-secondary education and jobs. Leadership from both the business community and the public schools was critical to early success. In Boston, key business leaders and the superintendent of schools worked to build widespread support for the Compact and proposed changes in the schools (Bermon, 2016; Delmony, 2016; Robert, 1982; Snyder, 1988). As capacity increased and more actors became engaged in improving the schools, the Boston Compact was joined by other organizations in support of Compact efforts. These included the Boston Private Industry Council to provide support and develop several jobs programs; the Boston Plan for Excellence which established a $10 million dollar endowment to support innovative teaching and curriculum development; and the Citywide Education Coalition, which represents citizen concerns about public schools in Boston and included local education actors, businesses, foundations, banks, higher education, and other community-based organizations (External actors and the Boston public schools: The courts, the business community, and the mayor, 2011; Jones et al., 1997; Robert, 1982; Snyder, 1988). Overtime, the business community continued to support the Compact, although some began to express concern with the lack of continued school improvement. By the late 1980s, the business community sought new reforms that include a change in school management practices and a greater parental role in decision-making. Calling for “fundamental change” leaders in business, while negotiating “Compact 2” sought specific reforms, including school-based management that would increase the authority of principals and headmasters within the schools, greater competition among the schools, and possibly the closing of some schools. In 1989,

46

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

a new agreement was signed that included most of the changes called for by ­business (External actors and the Boston public schools: The courts, the business community, and the mayor, 2011; Snyder, 1988). Unlike the ultimate failure of the Pittsburgh regime to implement broad community-­wide change that was necessary for success in desegregation efforts, leadership in Boston was able to build capacity and sustain a regime of actors from a wide range of backgrounds that successfully engaged the community to implement measurable change in the schools. Once reason for the different outcomes is the focus of each reform effort itself. In Pittsburgh, reform was centered around desegregation, and the primary method to achieve it was busing, an extremely unpopular solution. This is a process approach rather than an outcome approach. Pittsburgh actors, operating in a hostile environment, were primarily concerned with meeting federal mandates to integrate the schools and therefore implemented strategies that equalized racial balance under the assumption that this would lead to improved performance for minorities. In Boston, racial tensions had subsided to the point that the business community operating as a market regime was able to push for a comprehensive transactional approach that focused on measurable outcomes, with targeted goals for school performance that were met with guarantees of access to higher education and opportunities for work. This demonstrates that regime success and the implementation of reform are highly dependent on local history and culture, current economic conditions, broader community concerns including environmental concerns, and political structures.

Reform Through State Takeovers Local response to mandated change that results from judicial review and action can be disruptive to the community and can at times lead to a hostile response as mandates from federal courts stir different groups to organize either to protect the current environment or to promote change and new education structures. Another intervention, a state takeover of the local schools, can lead to an equally disruptive environment. School takeovers historically occurred as a result of financial mismanagement, although in recent decades, poor academic performance has become more common justification. This is largely the result of a greater federal role in  local education and federal government emphasis on accountability and improved performance (Welsh & Williams, 2018). A takeover, labeled here as a state takeover, can include action that reduces or eliminates the authority of the local governing board and replaces it with leadership named by the governor or the courts, a takeover by the state board of education, action by the state or state courts that places control of the schools with the mayor of the city who names an independent executive or board to govern the schools, or a hybrid that includes elements of different approaches. In recent years it has become more common for local schools to be placed under the control of a state-run district (Jochim & Pillow, 2019; Rogers, 2012; Welsh & Williams, 2018; Wong & Shen, 2003).

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

47

In each of these takeovers, the local government board is generally eliminated altogether or at the very least loses much of its governing authority and may remain in place in an advisory role. When state officials, including the governor or the state board of education, assume control of the schools, it is often the case that an outsider, with no ties to the community, is brought in to enact mandated changed. Despite existing local connections, when the mayor’s office is given control of local schools, it often comes with mandates for specific change outcomes, and the mayor may be likely to name an outsider who is also seen as unwanted outside influence by some. Professional educators often have a negative perception of outside leadership including local mayoral leadership, believing such leadership is an infringement on school autonomy and that non-educators lack the expertise and experience to lead large school systems (Gill, Zimmer, Christman, & Blanc, 2007; Welsh & Williams, 2018; Wong & Shen, 2007). The rationale for bringing in an outsider is that external leadership, without concern for entrenched interests that have contributed to poor performance and a culture of failure, and with a state mandate that grants new leadership with sweeping powers to transform the existing structure, may be better able to turn around failing schools. Civic capacity and the ability to engage members of the community are secondary concerns. The mandated takeover of a school district and the authority granted to new leadership can take many forms. It may be vested with control over the entire district or only over select (usually failing) schools. Authority may be limited to finances, administration, academic, all three, or a hybrid form. In recent years, state takeovers involving the legislature, the courts, or mayoral control have occurred in Baltimore; Boston; Camden, NJ; Chicago; Cleveland; Newark, NJ; Philadelphia; the District of Columbia; and elsewhere (Gill et al., 2007; Jochim & Pillow, 2019; Rogers, 2012; Wong & Shen, 2007). The passage of ESSA in 2015 has had a significant impact on school takeovers: (1) Governors, rather than state school boards, are more likely to dominate takeover efforts; (2) poor performance, particularly services for “at-risk” youth, has replaced financial mismanage as takeover justification; and (3) takeovers are more likely to occur in states with Republican governors whereas before takeovers tended to be party-neutral. ESSA devolved authority and accountability from the federal government to the local community. This increased responsibility also made schools more accountable to state officials who were accountable to the federal government. This likely has encouraged states to be more proactive in decisions to intervene in failing schools (Welsh & Williams, 2018). Justification for the takeover, the proposed remedy, as well as the role local actors play in the new governance structure can significantly impact capacity to respond to a takeover of local schools. Historically, states have intervened in  local school affairs due to financial mismanagement or long-standing poor performance on standard measures to improve performance and increase accountability. Despite the fact that by 2016 states had taken over more than 100 school districts, evidence that the removal of local decision making and the subsequent loss of power, as management of schools is transferred to a non-local, third party actors, has led to significant improvements in school performance is at best mixed (Capo, 2019; City study 2019:

48

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

Camden, 2019; Greene & McGee, 2019; Harris & Larsen, 2019; J.Chin, Kane, Kozakowski, Schueler, & Staiger, 2017; Jochim & Hill, 2019; Morel, 2018; Pham, Henry, Kho, & Zimmer, 2019; Schueler, 2016). Therefore, the argument that the state takes control of local schools as a means to improve performance is not substantiated by the evidence. Opposition to Takeovers Welsh and Williams (2018) suggest that local opposition to state takeovers, regardless of the proposed remedy, generally fall into one of two types: (1) challenges to the social legitimacy of a takeover from within the community and (2) challenges to the legal standing of the state from politicians, unions, and other interest groups. While each of these responses would seek to protect the existing structure and defend against threats, the actors within the regime are likely to be very different. Each would be concerned with the loss of power and the ability to influence local decision-making. Outside intervention to take control of local school governance raises serious questions about accountability, representativeness, and equality as the power to govern through social production and negotiation with members of the local regime is replaced with the state power over local actors who now lack voice and the ability to exert control over local resources. This can be especially disruptive in urban centers where minority representation on local school boards is a source of power and pride for minority communities. Work by Henig et al. (1999), Morel (2018), and others found that election to the school board is an important access point to increase civic capacity and develop political power for blacks and Latinos. Challenges to the social legitimacy of the takeover would likely come from grassroots community organizers and education actors who fear minority disenfranchisement and the loss of local decision-making. Members of this regime would include education actors (teachers, administrators, school unions, and elected school board members), parents, community groups, and others concerned with justice and equality. Those who challenge the legal standing of state takeovers fear loss of power and would include local politicians, and education actors, particularly elected board members who are most likely to lose governing ability. A common strategy to combat takeovers is through the judicial system where claims against the constitutionality of a takeover are heard (Burns, 2003; Henig et al., 1999; Morel, 2018; Russakoff, 2015; Welsh & Williams, 2018). Support for Takeovers In most instances, once the decision has been made, avoiding a state takeover is not possible; however, no takeover is permanent, and eventually, the state will return control to local officials. Support for school takeovers can vary. Some may see it as a necessary evil, while others may see it as the only path to salvation. In 1986, the New Jersey Department of Education was contemplating whether to take control of

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

49

failing schools within the state.1 Opposition to the proposal was widespread and included teachers and their representing unions, school administrators, the New Jersey School Boards Association, and others within the entrenched education regime. One group, the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, came out in support of the takeover plan, much to the amazement of most of its members. The association argued that there is a moral obligation to intervene in schools that are chronically underperforming and that such a takeover would only happen after years of failure when a district was given more than sufficient warning and after receiving specific direction to make required changes (Abrams, 1986). While it is likely that most in the local community would oppose a state takeover, there may be those that see an opportunity to have influence over the new structure that emerges once the state returns control. Less concerned with power structures, they may accept the realization that outside actors are in control or realize that state intervention is the only viable means to improve schools and to increase accountability, representativeness, and equality, and as a means of securing justice for those left behind in failing schools. Members of this community development regime would likely include grassroots organizations, parents, leaders from the minority community, faith-based organizations, and others seeking justice and equity. In most instances, when the state intervenes by taking control of schools, the resulting structure includes market-based reforms that feature charter schools or other forms of parental choice (Welsh & Williams, 2018). Unlike regimes discussed previously, members of the business community market-based regime may see this as an opportunity to influence local education and lift education reform and school choice to a position of importance on the local governing agenda. Actors in this regime may include elite business leaders, parents, non-profit organizations, and religious leaders. They may seek to work with the existing education regime in a collaborative effort or work independently, possibly in opposition to the education regime. The market-based regime may take advantage of school choice legislation or work to pass new enabling legislation that allows for charter schools and greater parental choice. This market-driven model is consistent with the interests of business leaders and parents whose children are attending failing schools under state receivership and see school choice as an opportunity for a better education. In any takeover of the local schools, it is important for state leaders to build community buy-in for any proposed changes (Jochim & Hill, 2019; Redriguez & Villarreal, 2003). The lack of community support will embolden those who oppose the takeover; they may continue to challenge takeover efforts in the courts or attempt to subvert any new policies and programs even as they are being implemented. Developing local support for change can increase the likelihood of success, allow for a smoother transition when the state returns local control, and encourage local involvement in the new school system structure.

 New Jersey became the first state to allow for state takeovers when it passed enabling legislation in 1989. 1

50

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

Reform Through Legislation The previous discussion on mandated top-down change involved governmental response to a perceived crisis. Failure to comply with prescribed change would likely result in further sanctions ranging from the use of the National Guard to enforce desegregation as was done in Little Rock Arkansas in 1954, to what is in effect, a dissolution of the existing school district through a state takeover as occurred in New Orleans following years of failure which culminated in events following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Another form of mandated change is hybrid change that is mandated through legislation and therefore cannot be disregarded; however, the community may have a greater voice in how the legislation is enacted. Rather than court-ordered change with prescribed outcomes such as busing to achieve racially balanced schools or outside actor imposed change that results from state takeover, legislative acts generally create space to accommodate local conditions. The impact of major federal legislation, including the ESEA, NCLB, and ESSA, has been previously discussed; therefore, the focus here will be on actions by state legislatures. Most legislation related to curricular requirements or graduation requirements directed from the state will impact all state schools directly, and local regimes may or may not choose to expend resources to impact legislative outcomes. Status quo regimes comprised of education actors, some parents, local elected officials, and others who might be directly impacted by change may lobby to minimize legislation as a means to retain power and local control; however, outside of large urban centers with well-established and powerful regimes, it is unlikely the governing regime would have the capacity or chose to expend the resources to directly engage the state legislature. However, established market-based and community-­ based regimes with the capacity to act may be actively engaged in efforts to influence if not develop legislation at the state capitol to create new structures and new policies for specific locations within the state. They may advocate for great local control, a greater role for parents, or greater competition and choice. Chapters 10 and 11 discuss the role local regime actors played in supporting specific reforms for the Chicago Public Schools and the Milwaukee Public Schools in the 1980s and 1990s.

 eform Through Bottom-Up Change: The Detroit Market R Regime Much like Boston, Detroit has a long history of racial unrest. At the end of World War II, as in many large cities across the country, middle-class whites left the urban center for newly developed suburban housing. In the early 1970s, black leadership assumed political control of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). Leaders maintained a tight, centralized regime of education actors, with little space for influence from

Matching Intervention Typology to the Regime Typology

51

outside actors. Parents and other community members were largely shut out of school governance. School board efforts to integrate the schools failed however, as parents and leaders in both the white and black communities wanted their kids to remain in (segregated) neighborhood schools. This led to a lawsuit and the case Bradley vs. Millikin. Following lower court rulings, the case ended up in front of US District Court Judge Stephen Roth who ruled that the only way to desegregate the Detroit city schools was to include primarily white suburban schools in a regional busing plan that would transport minority students living in the inner city to the suburbs and white suburban kids to the inner city schools. Ultimately, this ruling was reversed by the USSC, and the city and suburban schools remain independent and largely segregated (Graham, 2016; Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 1974). Tight, highly centralized control of the schools continued through the rest of the decade; however, growing concern over financial mismanagement and student performance within the business community lead to efforts to break the tight hold the education regime had on the schools. In 1987, a coalition of business and community leaders published the Detroit Strategic Plan, a report outlining strategies to revitalize the city. Among the findings of the plan was the need to dramatically improve DPS, identifying high-quality schools as “essential” for business and community success. The Detroit Strategic Plan called for public-private collaboration with DPS. In response, DPS established a Citizens Education Committee comprised of business, labor, education, religious, and community groups which recommended DPS decentralize operations and establish greater parental choice options through empowered and choice schools (Graham, 2016; Jelier & Hula, 1999). Displeasure with continued financial problems facing the schools led the business community, led by the Detroit Chamber of Commerce, to choose not to support a renewal of the existing school tax levy or a new $160 million bond. In that same year, members of the business community backed four reform-minded at-large school board candidates who challenged incumbents. All four reform candidates were elected in the November 1988 elections. With backing of the market-based economic development regime led by business elite, and other members of the school board who joined the reform effort, the newly elected board members restructured the public school system around an agenda that promoted greater school choice for parents as well as a change in leadership, replacing the longtime superintendent with an interim executive supportive of choice and business-backed reforms (Jelier & Hula, 1999). Despite early successes, including improved financial stability, and the backing of most of the existing education regime, reformers continued to face challenges including an indecisive school board, a strong teachers union, a history of political and racial divisions, distrust of the business community, and a city government that kept the schools at arm’s length. Ultimately, these obstacles, including infighting within the regime, made it difficult to sustain the coalition. They also limited the capacity of the regime to generate widespread support from the community, and unsurprisingly, the reforms failed to significantly improve the quality of education in DPS.  The history of racial conflict, a culture of political unrest, poor economic conditions, and the political structures of the city and region prevented

52

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

the market-­based regime from implementing long-lasting and successful change (Jelier & Hula, 1999; Lake, Jochim, & DeArmond, 2015). Although reformers were unsuccessful in efforts to improve the quality of schools in Detroit or reduce segregation2 (never a stated goal of the regime), the structural changes that focused on parental choice remain today. Detroit ranks behind only New Orleans and Washington, D.C. in the percentage of total enrollment that attend charter schools. By this measure alone, the regime was highly successful in reinventing Detroit schools. Unfortunately, the cities larger economic decline has meant that between 2005 and 2012, DPS lost two-thirds of its enrollment. Schools compete for students sometimes going door-to-door in search of young people to fill buildings. This has not led to significant improvements in performance, an oft-cited claim of choice advocates. While charter school students do perform slightly better than students in traditional schools on standardized testing, results from 2013 indicate just 4% of fourth graders were proficient in math, and just 7% were proficient in reading. Results from 2017 and 2018 are more promising. In 2017, Detroit charter students outperformed regular public schools in Detroit in 15 of the 18 subjects on the State of Michigan standardized test, were twice as proficient in England language, and tested better in mathematics, although even charter schools still scored below the state averages. Charter schools, which cannot selectively admit students, outperformed all open enrollment schools on the SAT in 2018 (Bolzman, 2019; Lake et al., 2015). As evidenced here the ability to develop high levels of civic capacity is critical to engage the larger community in any change effort. It requires sustained commitment from a broad base of actors and must contend with historical, political, cultural, economic, and community differences that can tear apart any coalition. A successful regime is able to bridge gaps that separate people under a common cause. As has been demonstrated here, regimes can be effective, despite strong opposition from actors directly impacted by the outcome of change efforts. The next chapter examines in detail the importance of high-quality schools and the issues of race and housing and how these three issues co-mingle to influence access to power and the quality of education.

References Abrams, J. D. (1986, December 14). New jersey opinion: In support of school takeovers, Opinion. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/14/nyregion/new-jersey-opinion-in-support-of-school-takeovers.html Barnes, A. (2005). The conundrum of segregation’s ending: The education choices. Marquette Law Review, 89(1), 33–51. Bermon, C. Z. (2016, August). Selected resources documenting school desegregation. Retrieved from https://umb.libguides.com/desegregation  Detroit regional schools remain highly segregated. While suburban schools remain largely white, 85% of DPS families are black, and 84.5% qualify for free or reduced price lunches. 2

References

53

Blanc, S., & Simon, E. (2007). Public education in Philadelphia: The crucial need for civic capacity in a privatized environment. Phi Delta Kappan, 88(7), 503. Bolzman, K. (2019, July 30). Opinion: Detroit charter school successes will go unsung in debates. Retrieved from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2019/07/31/ opinion-detroit-charter-school-successes-go-unsung-debates/1867168001/ Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S., 483 (1954). Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 347 US 483. (1954). In. Burns, P. (2003). Regime theory, state government, and a takeover of urban education. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25(3), 285. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9906.00163 Capo, R.  K. a. Z. (2019, July 26). School takeovers fail: Is houston next?, Opinion. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Schooltakeovers-fail-Is-Houston-next-Opinion-14148214.php Catone, K.  C., Friedman, K., McAlister, S., Potochnik, T., & Thompson, J. (2014, September). Family engagement and education: A research scan and recommendations. Retrieved from https://www.annenberginstitute.org/publications/ family-engagement-and-education-research-scan-and-recommendations Chin, M., Kane, T.  J., Kozakowski, W., Schueler, B.  E., & Staiger, D.  O. (2017). School district reform in newark: Within- and between-school changes in achievement growth (working paper). Retrieved from Cambridge, MA: file:///F:/Research/Dissertation%20book%20proposal/literature/school%20district%20reform%20in%20Newark.pdf City study 2019: Camden. (2019). Retrieved from Stanford, CA: file:///F:/Research/Dissertation%20 book%20proposal/literature/City%20Study%202019.%20Camden%20.pdf Civil Rights Movement in Virginia. (n.d.). Virginia history explorer. Retrieved from https://www.virginiahistory.org/collections-and-resources/virginia-history-explorer/ civil-rights-movement-virginia Dahl, R. (1961). Who governs?: Democracy and power in an American city. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Daugherity, B. J. (2014, May 30). Desegregation in public schools. Retrieved from https://www. encyclopediavirginia.org/Desegregation_in_Public_Schools#start_entry Delmony, M. (2016, March 29). The lasting legacy of the busing crisis. The Atlantic. Dohme, A. B., & Dohme, A. R. L. (1959, February 26). [Letter to maurice bowen]. Egler, D., & Thomas, K. (1988). School reform gets new life after summit. Chicago Tribune, p. 1. Elkin, S. L. (1987). City and regime in the American Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. External actors and the boston public schools: The courts, the business community, and the mayor. (2011). Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington, DC. Retrieved from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/external-actors-and-the-bostonpublic-schools-the-courts-the-business-community-and-the Gill, B., Zimmer, R., Christman, J., & Blanc, S. (2007). State takeover, school restructuring, private management, and student achievement in Philadelphia. Retrieved from Santa Monica, CA: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG533.html Gold, E., Simon, E., Cucchiara, M., Metchell, C., & Riffer, M. (2007). A Philadelphia story: Building civic capacity for school reform in a privatizing system. Retrieved from Philadelphia: http://www.researchforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/publication-photos/96/Gold_E_ Building_Civic_Capacity_for_School_Reform.pdf Graham, L. (2016, September 13). A moment in history that sealed the detroit schools’ fate. Retrieved from https://www.michiganradio.org/post/moment-history-sealed-detroit-schools-fate Greene, J. P., & McGee, J. B. (2019, September 5). States have lousy records when they take over local school districts, Opinion. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/States-have-lousy-records-when-they-take-over-14414336. php Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 (1964) Guide to the Pittsburgh School Desegregation Project Records, – A. (n.d.). Historic Pittsburgh. Retrieved from https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3AUS-PPiU-ais199302/ viewer#ref11

54

3  Community Engagement and the Education Regime

Harris, D.  N., & Larsen, M.  F. (2019, August 1). The effects of the new orleans post-katrina market-based school reforms on medium-term student outcomes. Retrieved from https://educationresearchalliancenola.org/publications/what-effect-did-the-new-orleans-school-reformshave-on-student-achievement-high-school-graduation-and-college-outcomes Henig, J. R., Hula, R. C., Orr, M., & Pedescleaux, D. S. (1999). The color of school reform: Race, politics, and the challenge of urban education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Holman, N. (2007). Following the signs: Applying urban regime analysis to a UK case study. Journal of Urban Affairs, 29(5), 435–453. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2007.00359.x Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study of decision makers. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Jelier, R. W., & Hula, R. C. (1999). A house divided: Community politics and education reform in Detroit. Urban Review, 31(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023240531165 Jochim, A., & Hill, P. (2019, September 19). State takeover of school districts can sometimes be just what’s needed, Opinion. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/State-takeover-of-school-districts-can-sometimes-14450845. php Jochim, A., & Pillow, T. (2019). Sustaining improvement after state takeovers: Lessons from New Orleans. Retrieved from http://libproxy.troy.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED594442&site=eds-live Jones, R.  R., Portz, J., & Stein, L. (1997). The nature of civic involvement and educational change in Pittsburg, Boston, and St. Louis. Urban Affairs Review, 32(6), 871–891. https://doi. org/10.1177/107808749703200606 Kane, T. J., Staiger, D. O., & Riegg, S. K. (2004). Do good schools or good neighbors raise property values? Retrieved from http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor/lap04/staiger-040506. pdf Lake, R., Jochim, A., & DeArmond, M. (2015). Fixing detroit’s broken school system. Education Next, 15(1), 20–27. Ledyaev, V., & Chirikova, A. (2019). Urban regimes in small Russian towns. City & Community, 3, 812. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12439 Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of “muddling through”. Public Administration Review, 19, 78–88. Macdomald, H., Zinth, J.  D., & Pompelia, S. (2019, February 14). 50-state comparison: High school graduation requirements. Retrieved from https://www.ecs.org/ high-school-graduation-requirements/ Melvill, H. (1854). The golden lectures: 45 sermons delivered at St. Margaret’s Church, Lothbury (Electronic edition). London: James Paul, I, Chapter House Court. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 No. No. 73-434 (United States Supreme Court 1974). Milwaukee’s schools: Polly’s plan. (1990, August 4). The Economist. Morel, D. (2018). Takeover: Race, education, and american democracy: Oxford University Press, New York City. Mossberger, K., & Stoker, G. (2001). The evolution of urban regime theory: The challenge of conceptualization. Urban Affairs Review, 36(6), 810–835. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185109 Ogintz, E. (1988, December 4). Education Inc.  – Business and community leaders merge so  – Inner-city kids can profit. Chicago Tribune, p. 1. Pham, L., Henry, G.  T., Kho, A., & Zimmer, R. (2019, July). School turnaround in tennessee: Insights after six years of reform. Retrieved from file:///F:/Research/Dissertation%20book%20 proposal/literature/School_Turnaround_in%20Tennessee%20After_Six_Years.pdf Railey, H. (2017). 50-state comparison: K-12 governance structures. Retrieved from https://www. ecs.org/k-12-governance-structures/ Ravitch, D. (2000). Left back: A century of battles of school reform. New York: Simon & Schuster. Redriguez, R. G., & Villarreal, A. (2003, June–July). Community-based education reform- increasing the educational level of communities as an integral part of school reform. IDRA Newsletter. Retrieved from https://www.idra.org/resource-center/community-based-education-reform/

References

55

Reid, L. (2018, October 19). An unsuccessful 30-year effort to desegregate pittsburgh public schools. Dividing Lines: The Shape of Education in Pittsburgh. Retrieved from https://www. wesa.fm/post/unsuccessful-30-year-effort-desegregate-pittsburgh-public-schools#stream/0 Robert, W. (1982). Professionals at bay: Managing Boston’s public schools. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1(4), 454. https://doi.org/10.2307/3324775 Rogers, R. (2012). In the aftermath of a state takeover of a school district: A case study in public consultative discourse analysis. Urban Education, 47(5), 910–938. Russakoff, D. (2015). The prize: Who’s in charge of America’s school. New  York: Houghten Mifflin Harcourt. Saegert, S. (2006). Building civic capacity in urban neighborhoods: An empirically grounded anatomy. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28(3), 275. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2006.00292.x Schueler, B. (2016). Takeover to turnaround” What states and schools can learn from the Massachusetts takeover of Lawrence public schools. Harvard EdCast. Retrieved from https:// doi.org/www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/01/takeover-turnaround Seo, Y., & Simons, R. (2009). The effect of school quality on residential sales price. The Journal of Real Estate Research, 31(3), 307. Shipps, D. (2003). Pulling together: Civic capacity and urban school reform. American Educational Research Journal, 40(4), 841. Shirley, D. (1997). Community organizing for urban school reform. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Snyder, S. (1988, October 25). Business to schools: We want results boston compact has failed to cut dropout rates; new pact is being drawn. Boston Globe. Retrieved from https://searchproquest-com.libproxy.troy.edu/printviewfile?accountid=38769 Stone, C. N. (1989). Regime politics: Governing Atlanta 1946–1988. Lawrence, KS: University of kansas Press. Stone, C. N. (2001). Civic capacity and urban education. Urban Affairs Review, 36(5), 595. https:// doi.org/10.1177/10780870122185019 Stone, C. N., Henig, J. R., Jones, B. D., & Pierannunzi, C. (2001). Building civic capacity: The politics of reforming urban schools. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press. (2016). Takeover to turnaround what states and schools can learn from the Massachusetts takeover of Lawrence public schools. Retrieved from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/01/ takeover-turnaround Tyack, D. B. (1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Welsh, R.  O., & Williams, S.  M. (2018). Incentivizing improvement or imposition? An examination of the response to gubernatorial school takeover and statewide turnaround districts. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 26(124). Wong, K. K., & Shen, F. X. (2003). Measuring the effectiveness of city and state takeover as a school reform strategy. PJE. Peabody Journal of Education, 78(4), 89. doi:No_doi. Wong, K. K., & Shen, F. X. (2007). Mayoral leadership matters: Lessons learned from mayoral control of large urban school systems. PJE. Peabody Journal of Education, 82(4), 737–768. Wong, K.  K., Shen, F.  X., Anagnostopoulos, D., & Rutledge, S. (2007). Improving America’s schools: The education mayor. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Ziafati Bafarasat, A. (2018). ‘Theorizing’ regime theory: A city-regional perspective. Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(3), 412–425. http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujua20

Chapter 4

Good Schools for Good Development: Race, Class, and Housing

Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man – this race and that race and the other race being inferior –Abraham Lincoln

Abstract  Despite the impact of globalization, increased access to information, and improvements in technology, where one is born, grows up, and lives matters and has a significant impact on their future. Spatial inequalities resulting from urban development policies that encouraged white flight, redlining, and gentrification have led to economic segregation in housing patterns and what is in effect, a two-tiered structure for local schools in many urban regions. In the urban core, lower income, mostly minority students attend underfunded schools in high crime neighborhoods, and in the nearby suburbs, middle and upper income families have access to well-­ funded schools in lower crime areas. Education reformers seek to reduce these inequalities in outcomes by improving all students’ access to high-quality, high-­ performing schools, regardless of race, class, or home address. The focus of this chapter is to examine the interrelationships between schools, economic development, race, class, and housing. Keywords  Race · Class · Urban development · Boston · Urban renewal · Housing · Segregation

The purpose of education reform is to reduce inequalities in outcomes by improving all students’ access to high-quality, high-performing schools. This is especially true in the last 60 years where the emphasis has been on improving access and quality of schools that primarily serve disadvantaged students including low-income minority populations and students with special needs. Spatial inequalities resulting from © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Guo-Brennan, Community Engagement for Better Schools, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54038-8_4

57

58

4  Good Schools for Good Development: Race, Class, and Housing

urban development policies that encouraged white flight, redlining, and gentrification have led to economic segregation in housing patterns and what is in effect, a two-tiered structure for local schools in many urban regions. In the urban core, lower income, mostly minority students attend underfunded schools in high crime neighborhoods, and in the nearby suburbs, middle and upper income families have access to well-funded schools in lower crime areas. In many central city locations, white students do not attend the neighborhood public school. Many middle-class white families relocated to the suburbs decades ago, while those that remained within the boundaries of the urban public school system attend a charter school or private school. In Boston, for the 2017–2018 school year, 70% of school age children attend the public school system, with the remaining 30% attend charter, parochial, private, suburban schools, non-Boston Public Schools (BPS), special education schools, or are home schooled. Among those who attend BPS schools, 42% are Hispanic, 34% black, 14% white, 9% Asian, and 1% others, while 2018 census data indicated the general population is 20% Hispanic, 25% black, 45% white, 10% Asian, along with smaller percentages of other races (Boston city, Massachusetts, 2018; Boston public schools at a glance: 2017–2018, 2017). As seen Table 4.1, similar differentials are found in other major cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Pittsburgh. In each of these cities, the white student population is between one-third and one-half of the city population, while the black population in the schools is considerably higher than the city population in three of the five districts and nearly equal in Los Angeles and New York. The Hispanic population in the city schools is also disproportionately high in all four cities for which data is available.

Geography of Opportunity The political economy perspective that frames regime analysis assumes that local governments structure their environment to maximize economic output in order to sustain a strong economic base that guarantees regular tax revenues and strong employment for local residents. Commercial, industrial, and housing patterns are situated to maximize perceived output without serious regard for fairness and equity under the belief that the primary imperative of cities is to grow economically. This Table 4.1  City and school demographics by percent, five cities

White Black Hispanic Asian Other

Chicago Schools 11 36 47 4 2

City 33 30 29 6 2

Boston Schools 14 34 42 9 1

City 45 25 20 9.6