Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development, and the Columbus Public Schools (Urban Life and Urban Landscape)

Amazon.com Price: $18.95 (as of 02/05/2019 18:54 PST- Details)

SKU: GD-057-91-7267807 Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

Drawing on a broad range of sources, including over sixty interviews, Gregory S. Jacobs argues that school desegregation in Columbus failed to produce equal educational opportunity, not because it used to be inherently detrimental to learning, but because it used to be intrinsically incompatible with urban development. The city’s uneven response to Penick v. Columbus Board of Education [1979], the case that brought desegregation to the Columbus public schools, in the long run sacrificed the long-term health of the city school district to preserve the growth of the city itself. The resulting middle-class abandonment of urban education in Columbus produced an an increasing number of poor, African American city school system and a strong form of defensive activism within the overwhelmingly white suburban systems.
The title of the book refers not only to the elaborate tools used to circumvent the spirit of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision but also to the want to move beyond the unsuitable dichotomies and failed policies that have come to define desegregation. The book calls for a reconsideration of the complicated relationship race, class, and housing patterns have with city school reform efforts, a relationship obscured by this country’s vitriolic and once in a while violent battle over busing. Jacobs concludes his study with a “modest proposal” in which he recommends the abolition of the Columbus Public School District, the dispersal of its students right through surrounding suburban systems, and the creation of a choice-based “experimental education zone” within the old city school district boundaries.
Getting Around Brown is a text for scholars of up to date American history, urban studies, civil rights and race relations, and educational policy, in addition to anyone interested in public education and politics.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Asia » Japan » General » Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development, and the Columbus Public Schools (Urban Life and Urban Landscape)

Recent Products