The Choice We Face Read online

  9. Crespino, Strom Thurmond’s America, 211–14; Dean J. Kotlowski, “Nixon’s Southern Strategy Revisited,” Journal of Policy History 10, no. 2 (1998): 208–9, 212–16.

  10. “Text of the President’s Statement Explaining His Policy on School Desegregation: Nixon Seeks to Raise Education Quality, with Stress on ‘Racially Impacted’ Areas,” New York Times, March 25, 1970; Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 126–29.

  11. “Transcript of Nixon’s Statement on School Busing,” New York Times, March 17, 1972.

  12. Emily M. Hodge, “School Desegregation and Federal Inducement: Lessons from the Emergency School Aid Act of 1972,” Educational Policy 32, no. 1 (March 2016): 1–2, 13; Gary Orfield, Congressional Power: Congress and Social Change (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 78–79.

  13. Orfield, Congressional Power, 173–78; Hodge, “School Desegregation and Federal Inducement,” 16.

  14. Hodge, “School Desegregation and Federal Inducement,” 16.

  15. Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 114–18; Chemerinsky, “The Segregation and Resegregation of American Public Education,” 41–42.

  16. Linda Greenhouse, “Warren Burger Is Dead at 87; Was Chief Justice for 17 Years,” New York Times, June 26, 1995; Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 386–91; “Examining the Legacy of Chief Justice Warren Burger,” Constitution Daily, National Constitution Center, June 9, 2019, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/examining-the-legacy-of-chief-justice-warren-burger.

  17. Baugh, The Detroit School Busing Case, 120–21; quotes from Perlstein, Nixonland, 386–91, 605; Black, Schoolhouse Burning, 179–88.

  18. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep418/usrep418717/usrep418717.pdf; Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 140–41; Gary Orfield, “Segregated Housing and School Resegregation,” in Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education, ed. Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 296–97.

  19. Gary Orfield, “Turning Back to Segregation,” in Orfield and Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation, 2.

  20. Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (New York: Penguin Random House, 2014), 166–67.

  21. “Reagan on Busing,” [1976], Ron Nessen Papers, Box 39, Folder “Reagan—Issues—Busing,” Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0204/1512166.pdf.

  22. Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 1–3.

  23. Delmont, Why Busing Failed, 211; Orfield, “Turning Back to Segregation,” 16.

  24. Orfield, “Turning Back to Segregation,” 16–19.

  25. “1980 Republican Platform,” Patriot Post, https://patriotpost.us/documents/446; Robert Pear, “Reagan Proposes Vouchers to Give Poor a Choice of Schools,” New York Times, November 14, 1985.

  26. Crespino, Strom Thurmond’s America, 270–71; Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 259–63.

  27. Maris Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind: National Education Goals and the Creation of Federal Education Policy (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009), 15–16; Dan Bauman and Brock Read, “A Brief History of GOP Attempts to Kill Education Dept.,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Brief-History-of-GOP/243739; Robert Johnston, “Terrell Bell, Known for Defending Federal Role in Education, Dies,” Education Week, July 10, 1996, https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/terrel-bell-known-for-defending-federal-role-in-education-dies/1996/07; “1980 Republican Platform.”

  28. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 15–16; Noel Epstein and Lee Lescaze, “Terrel Bell Reported Choice to Become Education Secretary,” Washington Post, January 7, 1981; Bauman and Read, “A Brief History of GOP Attempts to Kill Education Dept.”

  29. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 1983), 5; Ravitch, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 10–11.

  30. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 18.

  31. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 16.

  32. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk.

  33. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk, 76–77.

  34. Goldstein, Teacher Wars, 181.

  35. Maris Vinovskis, The Road to Charlottesville: The 1989 Education Summit (National Education Goals Panel, 1999), https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/negp/reports/negp30.pdf, 6.

  36. David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

  37. Vinovskis, “The Road to Charlottesville,” 17–18.

  38. Vinovskis, “The Road to Charlottesville,” 17–18.

  39. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 14–15.

  40. Clinton quoted in Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 25.

  41. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 26–27.

  42. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 42–51.

  43. Vinovskis, “The Road to Charlottesville,” 27.

  44. President George H. W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on the National Education Strategy,” April 18, 1991, American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-the-national-education-strategy; Jack Schneider, “George H. W. Bush Laid the Foundation for Education Reform,” The Conversation, December 3, 2018, https://theconversation.com/george-h-w-bush-laid-the-foundation-for-education-reform-108018.

  45. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 42–51.

  46. Carl, Freedom of Choice, 100–102.

  47. Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” American Educator, Winter 2014–2015, 9; Joetta L. Sack, “Clinton Turns Spotlight on Performance,” Education Week 19, no. 35 (May 10, 2000) https://www.edweek.org/leadership/clinton-turns-spotlight-on-performance/2000/05.

  48. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 64–65.

  49. Vinovskis, From a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind, 67–75.

  50. Michael R. Benezra, “How Policymakers Started the Federal Charter School Movement: A Case Study in Policy Entrepreneurship” (master’s thesis, Harvard Extension School, 2016), 10; US Department of Education, “Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program, Year One Evaluation Report,” 2000, https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/pcsp-year1/edlite-title.html.

  51. H.R. 1804 (103rd): Goals 2000: Educate America Act, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/103/hr1804.

  52. “Charter Schools Program State Educational Agencies (SEA) Grant,” US Department of Education, https://www2.ed.gov/programs/charter/funding.html.

  53. Chemerinsky, “The Segregation and Resegregation of American Public Education,” 29.

  54. Clinton quoted in Benezra, “How Policymakers Started the Federal Charter School Movement,” 53.

  55. Sack, “Clinton Turns Spotlight on Performance.”

  56. Chemerinsky, “The Segregation and Resegregation of American Public Education,” 38–41.

  57. Grundy, Color & Character, 138–56; Sean F. Reardon and John T. Yun, “Integrating Neighborhoods, Segregating Schools: The Retreat from School Desegregation in the South, 1990–2000,” in Boger and Orfield, School Resegregation, 64–65. On Nashville, see Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis.

  58. US Department of Education, “No Child Left Behind,” Executive Summary, January 7, 2002, https://www2.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.pdf; Erik W. Robelen and Lisa Fine, “Bush Plan:
‘No Child Will Be Left Behind,’“ Education Week 20, no. 20 (January 31, 2001), https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04; Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 96–98.H.R.1—No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress; Andrew Rudalevige, “The Politics of No Child Left Behind,” EducationNext 3, no. 4 (Fall 2003), https://www.educationnext.org/the-politics-of-no-child-left-behind.

  59. Robelen and Fine, “Bush Plan”; Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, 96–98; US Department of Education, “No Child Left Behind.”

  60. Diane Ravitch, “NCLB: Measure and Punish,” chap. 6 in The Death and Life of the Great American School System; Linda Darling-Hammond, “Evaluating ‘No Child Left Behind,’“ Nation, May 2, 2007, https://www.thenation.com/article/evaluating-no-child-left-behind; Goldstein, The Teacher Wars, 184–88.

  61. National Center for Education Statistics, “Educational Institutions,” https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84; Stephanie Stullich et al., Title I Implementation: Update on Recent Evaluation Findings (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2009), xx, 21; Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, 104; Darling-Hammond, “Evaluating ‘No Child Left Behind.’“

  62. Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, 199–201.

  63. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Investment to Accelerate Creation of Strong Charter Schools,” press release, June 7, 2003, https://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2003/06/investing-in-highquality-charter-schools.

  64. James Forman, Jr. “The Rise and Fall of School Vouchers: A Story of Religion, Race, and Politics,” UCLA Law Review 54, no. 3 (February 2007): 547–604.

  65. “Out-of-State Money Funds ‘Local’ Pro-Voucher Political Action Groups,” “All Children Matter—Organizational File,” Box 2, Folder 7, and “Alliance for School Organizational File,” Box 2, Folder 8, People for the American Way collection of political ephemera, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  66. National Center for Education Statistics, “Number and Enrollment of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools, by School Level, Type, and Charter and Magnet Status: Selected Years, 1990–91 Through 2016–17,” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_216.20.asp.

  67. Shan Carter et al., “On the Issues: Education,” New York Times, May 23, 2012; David Mark, “2010 Complete Election Coverage: Full Text: Obama Interview,” Politico, February 12, 2018, https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8457_Page2.html.

  68. James Janega and Carlos Sadovi, “Duncan to Join Obama Cabinet,” Chicago Tribune, December 16, 2008; Arne Duncan, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest Serving Secretaries of Education (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 57–58; Black, Schoolhouse Burning, 35–38.

  69. Ana Betriz Cholo, “Businesses Help New Schools; $3.7 Million in Grants for Renaissance 2010,” Chicago Tribune, February 23, 2005; Don Lubin, “Businesses Back Public School Reform,” Chicago Tribune, December 6, 2004.

  70. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 14–16; Race to the Top Program Executive Summary (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2009), 7, 11, https://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf.

  71. Stephanie Banchero, “Daley School Plan Fails to Make Grade: Renaissance 2010 Officials Defend Efforts to Upgrade Education over Last 6 Years,” Chicago Tribune, January 17, 2010.

  72. Fabricant and Fine, Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education, 65; Joanna Barkan, “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools,” Dissent Magazine, Winter 2011, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools; Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash, The Turnaround Challenge: Why America’s Best Opportunity to Dramatically Improve Student Achievement Lies in Our Worst-Performing Schools (Boston: Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, 2007).

  73. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 16–17; Duncan, How Schools Work, 98–101

  74. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “Every Student Succeeds Act,” https://www.publiccharters.org/our-work/federal-policy/every-student-succeeds-act; “The Every Student Succeeds Act: Explained,” Education Week 35, no. 14 (December 2015): 17; Dustin Hornbeck, “Federal Role in Education Has a Long History,” The Conversation, April 26, 2017, https://theconversation.com/federal-role-in-education-has-a-long-history-7480.

  75. Kelly P. Kissel, “Why Wal-Mart Family Foundation Is Spending $1 Billion on Charter Schools,” Christian Science Monitor, January 7, 2016.

  76. Dylan Mathews, “Billionaires Are Spending Their Fortunes Reshaping America’s Schools. It Isn’t Working,” Vox, October 30, 2018, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/30/17862050/education-policy-charity.

  77. “Interview with Betsy Devos, the Reformer,” Philanthropy, http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/interview_with_betsy_devos; Erica Green, “To Understand Betsy DeVos’s Educational Views, View Her Education” New York Times, June 10, 2017.

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE SCHOOL CHOICE MENU

  1. Kahlenberg, “From All Walks of Life”; Willie, Edwards, and Alves, Student Diversity, Choice and School Improvement, 12–14, 21–31; Willie and Alves, Controlled Choice.

  2. Coit v. Green, 404 U.S. 997 (1971); Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983); Milton Gaither, Homeschool: An American History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 111; Stanley Hanna, “Bob Jones University v. United States: Interpretation and Conclusions,” Journal of Education Finance 9, no. 2 (Fall 1983): 235–40.

  3. Taylor Swaak, “Democrats for Education Reform Release New Poll Suggesting Most Voters Are ‘Education Progressives.’ Here Are 7 Takeaways,” 74, August 6, 2018, https://www.the74million.org/democrats-for-education-reform-release-new-poll-suggesting-most-voters-are-education-progressives-here-are-7-takeaways.

  4. On an extended network of Black school choice reformers, see Keith E. Benson, “To the Black Education Reform Establishment, Be Real with Who You Are and Whose Interest You Represent,” https://www.academia.edu/38324301/To_the_Black_Education_Reform_Establishment_Be_Real_with_Who_You_Are_and_Whose_Interest_You_Represent.pdf?auto=download.

  5. Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967); Jonathan Kozol, Free Schools (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 14–16.

  6. Deborah Meier, “Creating Democratic Schools,” Rethinking Schools 19, no. 4 (2005), 28–29; Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Lewis, New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg, 115–16.

  7. Michael Klonsky and Susan Klonsky, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society (New York: Routledge, 2008); Jack Schneider, “The Right Space: The Small Schools Movement,” chap. 3 in Excellence for All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011).

  8. Amy Martinelli, “The Powerful Pull of Suncoast High School: How Magnet Schools Turned Desegregation into Choice, 1969–2000” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2015), 16–18; Lauri Steel and Roger Levine, Educational Innovations in Multiracial Contexts: The Growth of Magnet Schools in American Education (Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, 1994), iii, 1–5.

  9. Christine H. Rossell, “The Effectiveness of Desegregation Plans,” in School Desegregation in the 21st Century, ed. Christine H. Rossell, David J. Armor, and Herbert J. Walberg (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 67–69; Christine H. Rossell, “Magnet Schools: No Longer Famous, but Still Intact,” Education Next 5, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 44–49.

  10. Mira Debs, Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in the Era o
f School Choice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2019), 9.

  11. Rossell, “Magnet Schools,” 44–49.

  12. Erica Frankenberg, “Preferences, Proximity, and Controlled Choice: Examining Families’ School Choices and Enrollment Decisions in Louisville, Kentucky,” Peabody Journal of Education 93, no. 4 (2018): 378–94; Cynthia Gersti-Pepin, “Magnet Schools: A Retrospective Case Study of Segregation,” High School Journal 85, no. 3 (2002): 47–52; Steel and Levine, “Educational Innovations in Multiracial Contexts,” ii–iii.

  13. Christine H. Rossell, The Carrot or the Stick for School Desegregation Policy: Magnet Schools or Forced Busing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 100–108; Baugh, The Detroit School Busing Case, 89–91, 120–21.

  14. Nicholas Kryczka, “Building a Constituency for Racial Integration: Chicago’s Magnet Schools and the Prehistory of School Choice,” History of Education Quarterly 59, no. 1 (February 2019): 21–22.

  15. Debs, Diverse Families, Desirable Schools, 1–19.

  16. Gary Orfield and Erica Frankenberg, eds., Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 30–32, 255–70.

  17. Steve Estes, Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South after the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 85–101.

  18. Estes, Charleston in Black and White, 100–101.

  19. Estes, Charleston in Black and White, 100–101.

  20. Diette Courrégé, “Board Reviewing Buist Admissions Policy,” Post and Courier (Charleston, SC), February 18, 2009.

  21. Estes, Charleston in Black and White, 101–3. On the complexity of race and the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality, see Stanley Thangaraj, Desi Hoop Dreams: Pick-Up Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

  22. Estes, Charleston in Black and White, 101–3; Angela Rucker, “Are Schools Breaking Up? Burke, Magnet Problems Erupted After Beating,” Post and Courier, November 26, 1995.