Mapping the Causes of Unequal Schooling and the Transformative Possibilities of SociologyDespite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, by LewisAmanda E.DiamondJohn B.New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 249 pp. $27.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780195342727.Schooling the Next... (original) (raw)

The Wrong Track DEBORAH MEIER KEEPING TRACK : How Schools Structure Inequality

2005

Y et another "search for excellence" is accelerating demands for programs to benefit the "gifted and talented" at one end of the educational' spectrum and the "difficult learners" at the other. In other words, more tracking! Jeannie Oakes's ,new book arrives just in time to let us know what tracking has actually accomplished in American education and what its impact has been on students and society. Oakes demonstrates, with substantial evidence, that students have radically different and unequal schooling experiences depending on their race and social class. The disparity is not primarily due to differences in educational funding, parental wishes, local tradition or unequal genetic structures, as is usually claimed, but is instead the result gf tracking, the sorting of children into separate "ability"

Chapter 6 Equality and Justice For All? Examining Race in Education Scholarship

Review of Research in Education, 2007

D oes race (still) matter in educational discussions, analyses, and policies? This question seems to be a perennial that comes and goes, is hidden and reemerges, but is consistently (if implicitly) present. Consider, for example, educators' and educational researchers' concerns with assimilation, civilization, vocational training, IQ, poverty, cultural difference, remedial education, school readiness, achievement gaps, accountability, and standardization-all of these conversations were and still are intimately connected to race and racism regardless of whether we name them as such. Although the scholarship on race in education is vast, we attempt to review some of the most pressing and persistent issues in this chapter. We also suggest that the future of race scholarship in education needs to be centered not on equality but rather on equity and justice. It is important in this chapter for us to outline what we mean by equity and equality and to explicate the differences in these terms. In the areas of race and education, "commonsensical" uses of these terms have been conflated. Within popular discourse, what is meant by equality is the same thing as what is meant by equity, and having equal resources for schools means that the schools are equitable, fair, and equal. But we understand these terms and their relationship differently and suggest that notions of justice must be intimately connected with these terms for equity and equality to have meaningful emphases. By equality, we mean sameness and, more specifically, sameness of resources and opportunities. This concept of equality is the long-term goal of a just society: children, regardless of race, socioeconomic class, or gender, should have access to the same

School Norms and Reforms, Critical Race Theory, and the Fairytale of Equitable Education

Critical Questions in Education, 2016

In this paper, I utilize three tenets of Critical Race Theory in education—racism is normal, whiteness as property, and interest convergence—to illuminate the overt and covert ways racial inequity is preserved in the contemporary climate of public schooling and corpora-tized education reform efforts, as well as the particularly troubling situation wherein communities of color have repeatedly been promised educational improvement and enrichment , but have rarely received it. I then attempt to connect what is with what might be, using Derrick Bell's theory of racial realism as a tool for understanding the very potent reality of this situation and how students, parents, educators, communities, activists and scholars can and do confront this reality as a form of empowerment in itself, and as such, can enact change.

Race, Class, and Gender in Education Research: An Argument for Integrative Analysis

Review of Educational Research, 1986

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The Agony of School Reform: Race, Class, and the Elusive Search for Social Justice

Educational Researcher, 2003

litical commitments of its change proponents. Some of these commitments provide the backdrop for the ideological interests that subvert social justice in education. Education and Democratic Theory and The Color School Reform provide a good pair for undertaking a critical study of school reform. They share common characteristics. First, both books represent an interdisciplinary approach to school reform. Fields is an emeritus professor of political science working with a philosopher of education, Feinberg. Henig et al. are political science scholars concerned with urban school reform (see also Henig, 2001; Stone et al., 2001). These collaborations suggest that research on educational change that cuts across traditional boundaries strengthens scholars’ ability to research persistent problems through intellectual partnerships. Second, both books represent empirical studies that are theoretically grounded. The first is an ethnographic analysis of a site-based reform in Ed City, with the authors engaging models of democracy from Rousseau to Sartre; the second is an ambitious study of the impact of reform on race relations in four Black-led cities—Washington, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit—mobilizing a framework they call “civic capacity.” Contrary to what researchers may expect, the fact that Blacks have reached positions of city leadership is not by itself sufficient to raise the educational achievement of Black students. Third, as already mentioned, both books confront the political aspects of reform, what I have called its ideological dimensions. I will review the books thematically. This review integrates them under the themes they share with respect to the centrality of power and ideology in education.