Majoritarian Cities: Policy Making and Inequality in Urban Politics

Chapter 7 - Democratic Control in an Impoverished, Segregated Urban School District

188 chaPter 7 Democratic Control in an Impoverished, Segregated Urban School District This chaPter discusses the story of the Gary schools over the last several decades. I highlight the unequal outcomes in the school system that first became apparent with the racial segregation of African American students in the mid-twentieth century, but have more recently become associated with most schools as a result of the substantial levels of poverty and racial segregation throughout the district. Segregation in the schools first became a political issue in the 1940s, eventually leading to the federal desegregation case in 1963, the dynamics of which revealed the limits of antisegregation sentiment among the city’s White population. The opposition to the intentional segregation of African American students that was expressed in the political process during the 1940s and 1950s clearly did not go so far as to include support for deliberate measures aimed at desegregation. In fact, strong political support for a geographic zone-based attendance policy in a segregated city effectively guaranteed segregated schools. Despite the objective reality of a heavily segregated district, in 1963, just nine years after Brown v. Board of Education and before the wave of successful desegregation lawsuits in other cities , a federal court found that the district’s policies were not in violation of the Constitution. This finding placed the debate over school policy squarely back in the political process. Thus, it was not until the election of Richard Hatcher in 1967 that the mayoral-appointed school board took steps toward school desegregation. As Gary’s economic decline escalated in the late 1960s and 1970s, the school district became increasingly made up of African American and lower-income students until it essentially became a one-race district. In addition to the changing racial composition of the schools was the substan- Democratic Control in an Impoverished, Segregated Urban School District 189 tial decline in the total number of students in the district. By the early 1990s, the district had half as many students as it did at its peak in the late 1960s, with a large majority of those students in poverty. At the same time, with citizens feeling as if school officials were unresponsive, voters overwhelmingly adopted a directly elected school board in 1991. Demographic and economic trends, in combination with the newly elected board, made the process of closing schools, which began in the 1990s, painfully long and complicated. Not until the sanctions of the No Child Left Behind Act for underperforming schools did the district seriously begin to reckon with its massive loss of students in terms of the number of school buildings it operated. More recently, because of the performance of many schools, the number of charter schools has increased, as many parents seek options outside the traditional public school system. Early results of charter schools confirm what a variety of researchers have argued, that they should be considered as only one way to address urban school reform. In sum, today a large majority of the Gary schools continually struggle with academic achievement. While Minneapolis enjoys fairly extensive political support for improving the city’s schools, the context of educational policy making in Gary is quite different. Historically, the local steel industry played a major role in education policy. But despite the fact that the district lists numerous “community partners” on its website, major organized groups such as business organizations and labor unions, with the exception of the teachers’ union, have not been active participants in the educational policy-making process in recent years. Even though the trend has been toward increasing democratic control in the district, changing the political processes that affect the district has done little to improve educational outcomes for most of Gary’s schoolchildren, within a context of decentralized federalism and extreme economic disadvantage. The underlying dilemma is that the demographic context in which school policy making takes place is frequently not conducive to creating sustained improvement in student academic achievement. Significant changes are necessary, changes that would likely involve authorization from and cooperation with county and state governments. In light of the seemingly intractable demographic patterns of the district, the chapter concludes with a discussion of potential policy options for the Gary schools, most of which revolve around the deliberate deconcentration of low-income students. Such an approach would necessarily involve expanding the debate about education policy in Gary beyond the city limits. 190 Majoritarian cities context The...