Description
Malczewski presents foundation leaders as self-conscious state builders and policy entrepreneurs who aimed to promote national ideals through a public system of education—efforts they believed were especially critical in the South. Black education used to be the most important component of this national agenda. Through extensive efforts to create a more centralized and standard system of public education aimed at bringing isolated and rural black schools into the public system, schools became important places for expanding the capacity of state and local governance. Schooling provided opportunities to reorganize local communities and augment black agency in the process. When foundations realized they could not unilaterally impose their educational vision at the South, particularly in black communities, they started to collaborate with locals, thereby opening political opportunity in rural areas. Unfortunately, even as foundations were effective at developing the institutional configurations necessary for education reform, they were less successful at implementing local programs consistently because of every state’s distinctive political and institutional context.