According to master-politician Thomas Tip O'Neill, all politics is local. Edwards and Willie demonstrate the efficacy of local community action, but also show how linkage with state, regional, and national agencies helps groups in their efforts to shape educational policy and practice.

Edwards and Willie examine the notion of critical mass and its relationship to community decision making. They also analyze the assets and liabilities of coalition politics. They show that specific population groups dominant in one season, and for selected circumstances, may become subdominant at another...

As part of a project on the status of African-Americans that was initiated by the William Monroe Institute for the Study of Black Culture at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, this volume takes a comprehensive look at the education of African-Americans, specifically early childhood through postsecondary education, and relevant public policy issues since 1940. The list of contributors to the study includes both white and black scholars who are affiliated with primarily urban institutions located in the Northwest, the South, and on the East Coast who are deeply committed to...

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education Topeka (347 U.S. 483) overturned the prevailing doctrine of separate but equal introduced by Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537) fifty-eight years prior. By the time Brown was decided, many states had created dual collegiate structures of public education, most of which operated exclusively for Caucasians in one system and African Americans in the other.

Although Brown focused national attention on desegregation in primary and secondary public education, the issue of disestablishing dual systems of public...

Diversified schools, in which students of various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic characteristics are balanced, have a positive contextual effect on achievement for all groups compared to schools with homogeneous student bodies that tend to help affluent, white students and harm poor students and students of color. The authors advise school districts convicted for operating segregated schools on how to make all schools schools of choice that must compete for students who enroll in them. And it discusses ways of being fair and just in the distribution of educational resources to affluent...

This collection provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the development of educational policy and practice in the United States during the past century. It presents education as a complex social structure and process that has changed through the years and that defies simplistic solutions. By reviewing competing theories of education, the editors promote an analytical framework that welcomes educational conflict as creative and beneficial.

"Effective Education" analyzes the ways in which majority and minority interests interact in the educational system. It outlines the concepts, goals, and policies of effective educational environments, and examines teaching and learning strategies for diversified groups of students. Despite the additional challenges presented by diversified student populations, author Charles Vert Willie demonstrates the advantages which may also derive from these groups, and shows how minority students can make general contributions to educational reform.