Reinterpreting Urban School Reform: Have Urban Schools Failed, or Has the Reform Movement Failed Urban Schools?

Introduction: Rethinking Urban School Reform

1 Introduction: Rethinking Urban School Reform Louis F. Mirón and Edward P. St. John The desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas, schools, after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, unleashed nearly a half century of externally generated reforms of urban schools. At the turn of the century, the array of education reforms that have been attempted in urban schools are extensive, their effects controversial, and the cumulative knowledge limited. Although the context has changed, the effects of reform on urban schools have arguably been remarkably consistent: the intended effects have largely remained unrealized. This raises a vital concern. Have urban schools failed or has educational reform failed urban schools? The New Global Context of Urban School Reform In the early history of urban school reform the embedded social context was fairly straightforward: urban schools mirrored the political economy of the city. Funding for urban school districts ebbed and flowed in proportion to the local tax base. Now the political economy of urban school districts is situated much more globally. As Julius Wilson, Gary Orfield, and others have consistently pointed out, urban schools are resegregated, underfunded , and perhaps somewhat academically weakened largely because of the waves of poor and uneducated immigrants, the disappearance of work in the inner city along with the concomitant rise in low-paying, part-time jobs, and the rise of high-tech industries that call for a highly educated labor force. These sociodemographic changes have spurned a passive resistance in high school students, who perceive that public schooling in the inner city is no longer relevant to their needs. In brief, the plight of urban school reform is now tied not only to the economic and social health of the city but indeed to rapid changes in the world economy. The justifications for current school reform efforts are similar to previous ones in that elites are in need of a skilled labor force in the cities. However , the discourse surrounding current reform efforts now pays more attention to the “performances” of school systems and their capacities to “produce” students as lifelong and constructivist learners . This appears to be a transformation in the societal conversations about school reform linked to the “mode of information” (see Poster 1989, 1990; also see Castells 1996). This transformation, unlike the early history of urban schools, is globally situated. By “globalization ” we mean here those social, economic, and technological processes largely confined to urban centers characterized by “deand reindustrialization, automation, revenue losses, brought on by middle-class taxpayer flight, and the emergence of new and urban multi-ethnic majorities.” (see Valle and Torres 2001, 102) The Reformers in Context A wide array of proponents of urban school improvement has initiated reforms that have had major influences on urban schools. Many of the reforms have both advocates and detractors, who interpret the reforms, their rationales and consequences, very differently. Therefore, there is a need to take a fresh look at urban schools. In this volume we propose to reinterpret urban school reform through what we call a critical-empirical review. The major sections of the book provide critical reviews of the evidence of the impact of four types of reform. These are discussed briefly below. The Courts and Urban School Reform Both the federal and state courts have played a direct, yet external , role in urban school reform. The federal courts have influenced urban schools through school desegregation litigation, whereas state constitutions and state supreme courts have influenced urban schools through legal challenges of school finance formulas. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. the Board of Education initiated a wave of reforms in urban communities. Although desegregation influenced nonurban schools as well, the impact of desegregation in urban schools was more substantial than in 2 Louis F. Mirón and Edward P. St. John other types of school communities. The citywide remedies ordered by the courts spurred massive bussing as well as widespread resistance , especially among white enclaves in local urban residential neighborhoods. Desegregation hastened white flight from urban schools and the concentration of poverty in inner cities. Further, the newer centers of global technologies are now usually located in suburban areas, rather than in urban centers, creating a further distance between the cities and the suburbs and the increasingly technologically linked world. In the early twentieth century, America’s cities represented the focal point of culture and technology, whereas the American metropolis now runs the risk...