Abstract
For some time, the intellectual center of gravity in sociology of education has been the study of determinants of students’ academic achievement and attainment. In their rush to study these important consequences of schooling, however, sociologists have paid insufficient attention to a logically prior and equally important question: Why do we have the kinds of schools we have, teaching what they do, providing the kinds of educational opportunities they do (or do not)? In other words, how is the structure of empty spaces constructed into which students are sorted? This chapter argues that a political theory of empty spaces in which the politics of education are embedded within American politics more generally is necessary and identifies the essential elements of such a theory. Such a theory requires us to: consider the interrelated effects of a series of what often appear on the surface to be different and independent school reform efforts, examine political struggles that take place both within and outside of formal institutions of politics, consider the (often unanticipated) long-term legacies of policies of the past, and be as attentive to the potential influence of ideas about educational problems and “good” solutions to them as to structural legacies of prior policies. The usefulness of this approach is then demonstrated through a brief analysis of the path-dependent policy process that accounts for the durable racial divide in public educational opportunities in the USA.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
For a careful analysis of all articles published over a 10-year period in the subfield’s leading journal, Sociology of Education, that corroborates this point, see Brint (2009).
- 2.
I focus on public K–12 education rather than private because the vast majority of American elementary and secondary students are enrolled in public rather than private schools, because the factors that determine the opportunity structure in K–12 private schooling are less political, and because family affluence is a more important factor governing access to private schooling than access to public schooling. (I note, however, that the state shapes private K–12 education in important if generally unacknowledged ways: State policies influence the availability of private schooling and determine the terms under which it can be offered.) I focus on K–12 education rather than higher education, even though I grant that for purposes of understanding student achievement and attainment, the organization and opportunity structure of American higher education is as, if not more, important at present than the organization and opportunity structure of K–12 education. Nonetheless, the processes that account for the former are quite different from the processes that account for the latter. The higher education opportunity structure is influenced by market processes to a far greater degree than is the case for K–12 education, and political authority over higher education is far more fragmented than is the case in K–12 education.
- 3.
That is, the attention is to the politics within the educational system and bureaucracy; other political institutions and actors are relevant primarily to the degree in which they interact with political actors within education. The point holds even for those excellent historical treatments of school reform that do deal well with the messy (within-education) politics of reform, such as Tyack and Cuban (1995) and Ravitch (2000).
- 4.
- 5.
This latter factor often is referred to as path dependence or policy feedback.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
The situation changed somewhat in 1965 with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which provided for the first time substantial federal funding to state and local school districts. ESEA is an antipoverty measure; funds are provided to school districts based on the proportion of children from low-income families they enroll (see Cross 2004; Urban and Wagoner 2000). However, when averaged across school districts, this federal funding has accounted for only about 10 percent of total spending on K–12 public education in the USA.
- 9.
The narrowing since the 1960s of the gap between blacks and whites in scores on achievement tests (see Jencks and Phillips 1998; Hedges and Nowell 1998) shows that modest progress has been made in some aspects of the racial divide. Nonetheless, the racial divide in access to what are considered to be good schools remains substantial.
- 10.
For compelling descriptions, see Kozol (1992, 2005); for comprehensive data on the degree to which schools in California that disproportionately enroll poor and minority students suffer such resource inadequacies, see Oakes (n.d.) and California Postsecondary Education Commission (1998). These kinds of data on instructional resources are not routinely collected by federal agencies. Also see Walters (2007).
- 11.
By color blind, I mean that race is not an explicit criterion for eligibility for benefit or assignment. School desegregation and busing are, in contrast, color-conscious policies in that race was used as a basis for school assignment.
- 12.
Little existing scholarship recognizes this path dependency. There are four exceptions, to the best of my knowledge. The first is Dougherty’s (2004) historical analysis of Milwaukee, which presents school desegregation, school finance reform, and vouchers in a sequential, path-dependent process but is limited by its primary focus on within-city politics. That focus causes him to miss the concurrently intertwined paths of the three reforms, because those connections are more apparent at the federal level. The second is Ryan’s (1999a) analysis of the complicated legal connections between desegregation and school finance reform, which shows clearly how race influenced both, but misses the ways in which both shaped and were shaped by the voucher movement. The third is Minow’s (2010) legal analysis of the legacies of Brown for a variety of subsequent equality-in-education movements undertaken by or on behalf of other social groups. While her analysis establishes a legal policy legacy from Brown to school vouchers, it misses the intertwined histories of school finance reform and Brown. The fourth is Ryan’s (2010) study of racial inequalities in educational opportunities a half-century after Brown, which beautifully shows that the histories of school desegregation, school finance reform, and vouchers are connected via a politics of race. Like his prior work and Minow’s, however, Ryan’s 2010 study is limited by a disaproportionate attention to court decisions as the primary engine of the policy development process. That said, these four analyses are rich and insightful, and none of them are intended to address the question I pose about the broad political determinants of the durable racial divide. Further, although some of the literature on school finance reform and vouchers shows that racial politics shape support for these reforms (see Ryan 1999b; Reed 2001a), little attention has been paid to similarities and differences in the ways these policies are racialized.
- 13.
Explicitly and directly so in those states that practiced de jure segregation; indirectly so in those states that practiced de facto segregation.
- 14.
Brown and busing were not expected to do it all alone, however. The federal government mounted other efforts in education that disproportionately benefited blacks without using race as a criterion for receiving social benefits (that is, they were color blind), among which were the antipoverty educational programs of the 1960s, such as Head Start and federal funding for school districts that educate disproportionate numbers of poor and at-risk students. None of these programs, however, directly attacked separate (that is, segregation). Nor was equality the goal; rather, the emphasis was on reducing hardship among the disadvantaged.
- 15.
Note, however, that the NAACP did not always hold that separate could not be equal. In fact, its early litigation campaigns to improve educational opportunities for blacks represented an attack on unequal: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the NAACP pressed the courts to enforce equality of state-funded educational facilities available to whites and blacks by bringing equalization suits against one school district and state after another throughout the South (Williams 2004; Anderson et al. 2004; Ogletree 2004a, b; Patterson 2001). Their many successful challenges improved black teachers’ salaries and the quality of black schools and opened up new opportunities for graduate and professional study for African Americans. By the 1950s, however, the NAACP considered the pursuit of equal while letting segregation stand to be a violation of its core principles.
- 16.
Until the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Keyes v. Denver School District, which extended the protections of Brown to students in districts that had practiced de facto segregation prior to Brown, most of the conflict over school desegregation was confined to the South.
- 17.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Group IV. Box A69, folder titled “Schools California 1966–69,” mimeo titled “Education Committee Report on Compensatory Education,” dated 2/11/1966.
- 18.
In its 1973 decision in Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, the US Supreme Court extended the right to desegregated schooling to Latinos, as well as African Americans who lived outside southern states that had practiced de jure segregation. Prior to Brown, the segregation of Latinos from white children had been accomplished by de facto means, as had the segregation of blacks from whites outside the South.
- 19.
In fact, many Hispanic parents opposed desegregation, in part because they worried that desegregated schools would not offer bilingual education. See Peter Roos to Ben Williams, Jan. 9, 1978, Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund Records, 1968–1984, RG5, Box 107, Folder 5.
- 20.
Stanford University Library, Department of Special Collections, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund Collection. Series Legal Programs/Litigation files, 1968–1982/ LA alphabetical files. MO 673, RG#5, Box 1127, file 1: Serrano v. Priest. Amicus brief, filed 12/31/1970, p. 3.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
To cite one example, in 1972 testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee concerning proposed federal legislation to require states to reduce school funding disparities, Terry J. Hatter Jr. of the Western Center on Law and Poverty declared that after the state court’s decision in 1971 in Serrano, which was followed closely by similar rulings in Texas, Minnesota, and New Jersey, “Almost overnight the matter of school financing has become one of the major domestic issues of the decade.” The directive of the court, he continued, is: “There is to be equalization of basic education for all; there is to be the opportunity for education for all; and everybody is to pay his fair share!” See “Public Education Finance.” CQ Electronic Library, CQ Almanac Online Edition, cqal72–1249347. Originally published in CQ Almanac 1972 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1973). http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal72–1249347 (accessed February 21, 2008).
- 24.
Not all black activists or black activist organizations embraced the separate-cannot-be-equal tenet. Extending back into the nineteenth century, one strand of black political culture – black nationalism – embraced autonomy, self-determination, and various degrees of segregation from white America alongside the quest for equality (Dawson 2001). Although most of the established Civil Rights organizations were united in their calls for enforcement of Brown and in support of school desegregation efforts through the 1960s, in September 1970, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) broke with the mainstream Civil Rights leadership over school desegregation and busing as a means to obtain equal educational opportunity for blacks. In a demonstration of the flexibility of core ideological concepts, CORE called for “desegregation without integration” (Wooten 1970:1). CORE and other voices for black nationalism continued to espouse equality in the context of segregated schooling throughout the early 1970s. Nonetheless, none of these voices for segregation carried much weight in the policy debates. For example, in February 1972, CORE denounced the Congressional Black Caucus (the 13 black members of the House) for its failure to include the organization in a national meeting about educational goals for black children, an exclusion it attributed to its support for “separate but really equal schools” (Lardner 1972:A3). In March 1972, participants in the first National Black Political Convention, a meeting dominated by separatists, passed a resolution condemning racial integration of schools, despite opposition by the NAACP (Johnson 1972:1). This position did not sway elected black policymakers: Within a few days of the passage of this resolution, the Black Political Caucus again reaffirmed its commitment to integration (Wentworth 1972:A1). The NAACP continued to represent its position as the true sentiment of the black community, arguing that polls consistently showed that the majority of African Americans supported school integration (Wilkins 1972). In sum, it was the integrationist arguments of the mainstream black Civil Rights organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League that held most sway in the national policy debates about educational equality for blacks in the early 1970s.
- 25.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Records of Leadership Conference in Civil Rights. Box I:114, “A Breakthrough for Higher Education.” Letter to the editor of Washington Post, May 31, 1972, by Joseph Rauh (lawyer for LCCR).
- 26.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Group VIII. Box 146, folder 1: Busing 1975–1979. Nathaniel R. Jones (General Counsel) to The Editor, Long Island Newsday, August 5, 1975.
- 27.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Records of the National Urban League, Part III. Box 17, folder 7: Communication Department, busing Mar–Sept 1972, n.d. Draft position paper, “The Facts about Busing,” March 29, 1972.
- 28.
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Records of the National Urban League, Part III. Box 17, folder 7: Communication Department, busing Mar–Sept 1972, n.d. Strategy paper titled “The Anti-Busing Crisis,” 3 pages, n.d.
- 29.
While, as previously described, the Congress for Racial Equality and other black separatist organizations and individuals were on the same side of this policy debate as whites opposed to busing, these groups lacked the political legitimacy of the more mainstream Civil Rights organizations and thus their policy preferences received little attention in the general debate.
- 30.
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 US 1 (1973). The lower federal court had held that the traditional financing method using property taxes imposed by local school districts was unconstitutional in violation of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that wealth was not a “suspect classification” and that education was not a fundamental right. Consequently, the state’s decision to use traditional school finance schemes was not subject to heightened judicial scrutiny but rather subject to the deferential rational basis test. The Court concluded that the state’s purpose of providing local control over education met that test. In contrast, the decision in Serrano, 487 P.2d 1241 (Cal. 1971), was based on a finding that unequal funding violated the state constitution. The Serrano decision initiated a wave of similar school finance lawsuits in other states.
- 31.
The US Supreme Court struck down freedom of choice plans in 1971 in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education.
- 32.
Part of the reason for the elimination of progress on school desegregation is a series of US Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s that curtailed busing and put such severe restrictions on desegregation plans that it was effectively dismantled (Orfield et al. 1996).
- 33.
A new pro-voucher advocacy organization, the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), was established in the late 1990s by African Americans who broke from the NAACP over their opposition to vouchers. The BAEO supports vouchers as a way to “empower low-income and working-class Black families.” See www.baeo.org. They ran a series of print pro-voucher ads shortly after their founding that featured photos of young black children with the tag line that “parental school choice is widespread – unless you’re poor.” See Kane (2001).
- 34.
See http://www.pfaw.org/, accessed March 10, 2010.
- 35.
See, for example, the websites of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (www.nea.org and www.aft.org).
- 36.
That is, eligibility is based on family income, not on students’ race.
- 37.
To be clear, however, these parental choices are enabled and constrained by decisions made by policymakers, including decisions about how to draw school district boundaries and how sacrosanct those boundaries are (Walters 2001).
References
Amenta, Edwin. 1998. Bold relief: Institutional politics and the origins of modern American social policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anderson, James, Dara N. Byrne, and Tavis Smiley (eds.). 2004. The unfinished agenda of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: Wiley.
Anyon, Jean. 1997. Ghetto schooling: A political economy of urban educational reform. New York: Teachers College Press.
Beckman, Aldo. 1972. U.S. maps antibusing plan. Chicago Tribune, Mar. 18, p. S1.
Beland, Daniel. 2005. Ideas and social policy: An institutional perspective. Social Policy and Administration 39: 1–18.
Benford, Robert D., and David A. Snow. 2000. Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–639.
Berkowitz, Edward, and Kim McQuaid. 1988. Creating the welfare state: The political economy of twentieth-century reform. New York: Praeger.
Binder, Amy. 2002. Contentious curricula: Afrocentrism and creationism in American public schools. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 1976. Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Routledge.
Brint, Steven. 2006. Schools and societies, 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brint, Steven. 2009. The ‘Collective Mind’ at work: A decade in the life of U.S. sociology of education. Sociology of Education Section Newsletter, Spring, pp. 7–15. Retrieved August 2, 2010 (http://www2.asanet.org/soe/misc/Newsletter_spring09.pdf).
Broder, David. 2002. Lines dividing vouchers. Washington Post, July 7, p. B07.
Bumiller, Elisabeth. 2002. Bush calls ruling about vouchers a ‘historic’ move. New York Times, July 2, p. A1.
Burstein, Paul, and Marie Bricher. 1997. Problem definition public policy: Congressional committees confront work, family, and gender, 1945–1990. Social Forces 76: 135–168.
Burstein, Paul, and April Linton. 2002. The impact of political parties, interest groups, and social movement organizations on public policy: Some recent evidence and theoretical concerns. Social Forces 81: 381–408.
California Postsecondary Education Commission. 1998. Toward a greater understanding of the state’s educational equity policies, programs, and practices. Sacramento: California Postsecondary Education Commission.
Campbell, John L. 1998. Institutional analysis and the role of ideas in political economy. Theory and Society 27: 377–409.
Campbell, John L. 2002. Ideas, politics, and public policy. Annual Review of Sociology 28: 21–38.
Candisky, Catherine. 1999. Two senators propose to amend state constitution. Columbus Dispatch March 4: 1A.
Carl, Jim. 1996. Unusual allies: Elite and grass-roots origins of parental choice in Milwaukee. Teachers College Record 98: 266–285.
Carr, Melissa C., and Susan H. Fuhrman. 1999. The politics of school finance in the 1990s. In Equity and adequacy in education finance: Issues and perspectives, eds. H.F. Ladd, R. Chalk, and J.S. Hansen, 136–174. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Chen, Edwin. 1996. Dole pushes plan for low-income students to select school of choice. Los Angeles Times, July 19, p. A10.
Chicago Tribune. 1972. Cloture motion made on busing bill in Senate. Chicago Tribune Oct. 7: 3.
Chubb, John E., and Terry M. Moe. 1990. Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions Press.
Clotfelter, Charles T. 2006. After “Brown”: The rise and retreat of school segregation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Corcoran, Sean, William N. Evans, Jennifer Godwin, Sheila E. Murray, and Robert M. Schwab. 2003. The changing distribution of education finance: 1972–1997. Working Paper, Russell Sage Foundation.
Cross, Christopher T. 2004. Political education: National policy comes of age. New York: Teachers College.
Davies, Scott. 1999. From moral duty to cultural rights: A case study of political framing in education. Sociology of Education 72: 1–21.
Dawson, Michael C. 2001. Black visions: The roots of contemporary African-American political ideologies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DeRolph v. State, 78 Ohio St. 3d 193, 197 (1997), (DeRolph I).
Dobbin, Frank. 1994. Forging industrial policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the railway age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Domhoff, G.William. 1990. The power elite and the state: How policy is made in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Dougherty, Kevin J., and Lizabeth Sostre. 1992. Minerva and the market: The sources of the movement for school choice. Educational Policy 6(June): 160–179.
Dougherty, Jack. 2004. More than one struggle: The evolution of black school reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Fairbanks, Robert. 1972a. Education voucher bill passes test in senate. Los Angeles Times, March 23, p. D2.
Fairbanks, Robert. 1972b. Senate group rejects voucher education plan. Los Angeles Times, July 11, p. A3.
Ferg-Cadima, James A. 2004. Black, white and brown: Latino school desegregation efforts in the pre- and post-Brown v. Board of Education era. Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Retrieved Mar 10, 2006 (http://www.maldef.org/pdf/LatinoDesegregation.pdf).
Ferree, Myra Marx. 2003. Resonance and radicalism: Feminist framing in the abortion debates of the United States and Germany. American Journal of Sociology 109: 304–344.
Folbre, Nancy. 1992. Remembering Alamo Heights. Texas Observer, Nov 13, pp. 6–9.
Friedman, Milton. 1955. The role of government in education. In Economics and the public interest, ed. Robert A. Solo. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Futrell, Mary Hatwood. 2004. The impact of the Brown decision on African American educators. In The unfinished agenda of Brown v. Board of Education, eds. James Anderson, Dara N. Byrne, and Tavis Smiley, 79–98. New York: Wiley.
Gilens, Martin. 1999. Why Americans hate welfare: Race, media, and the politics of antipoverty policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goodman, David 1999. America’s newest class war. Mother Jones, pp. 68–75.
Greenhouse, Linda. 1972. Property tax reform enthusiasm lags. New York Times, December 19, pp. 1, 36.
Hacker, Jacob S. 2002. The divided welfare state: The battle over private and private social benefits in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hanushek, Eric A. 1989. The impact of differential expenditures on school performance. Educational Researcher 18: 45–65.
Hanushek, Eric A. 1994. Money might matter somewhere: A response to Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald. Educational Researcher 23(4): 5–8.
Hasci, Timothy A. 2002. Children as pawns: The politics of educational reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hedges, Larry V., Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald. 1994a. Does money matter? A meta-analysis of studies of the effects of differential school inputs on student outcomes. Educational Researcher 23(3): 5–14.
Hedges, Larry V., Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald. 1994b. Money does matter somewhere: A response to Hanushek. Educational Researcher 23(4): 9–10.
Hedges, Larry V., and Amy Nowell. 1998. Black-white test score convergence since 1965. In The black-white test score gap, eds. Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, 149–181. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Henig, Jeffrey R., Richard C. Hula, Marion Orr, and Desiree S. Pedescleaux. 1999. The color of school reform: Race, politics and the challenge of urban education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Herbers, John. 1972a. School financing by states urged in federal study. New York Times, March 7, p. 1.
Herbers, John. 1972b. A new way to foot the bill. New York Times, March 12, p. E3.
Hess, Frederick M. 1999. Spinning wheels: The politics of urban school reform. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Hicks, Alexander M., and Duane H. Swank. 1992. Politics, institutions, and welfare spending in industrialized democracies, 1960–82. American Political Science Review 86: 658–674.
Hochschild, Jennifer, and Nathan Scovronick. 2003. The American dream and the public schools. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hogan, David. 1982. Making it in America: Work, education, and social structure. In Work, youth, and schooling, eds. Harvey Kantor and David Tyack, 142–179. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Howell, William G., and Paul E. Peterson. 2006. The education gap: Vouchers and urban schools, Revised ed. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Irons, Peter. 2002. Jim crow’s children: The broken promise of the Brown decision. New York: Viking.
Jencks, Christopher, and Meredith Phillips. 1998. The black-white test score gap: An introduction. In The black-white test score gap, eds. Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, 1–54. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Johnson, Thomas A. 1972. Black assembly voted at Parley. New York Times, March 13, p. 1.
Kahlenberg, Richard (ed.). 2003. Public school choice vs. private school vouchers. New York: Century Foundation Press.
Kane, Eugene. 2001. Voice for school choice. The Crisis, September/October, pp. 42–45.
Katz, Michael. 1968. The irony of early school reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Keyes v. School District No. 1 413 U.S. 189 (1973).
Kluger, Richard. 1977. Simple justice. New York: Vintage.
Korpi, Walter. 1983. The democratic class struggle. London: Routledge.
Koski, William S. 2004. The politics of judicial decision-making in educational policy reform litigation. Hastings Law Journal 55: 1077–1133.
Kozol, Jonathan. 1992. Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Harper Perennial.
Kozol, Jonatham. 2005. The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown.
Krueger, Alan B., and Pei Zhu. 2004. Another look at the New York City school voucher experiment. American Behavioral Scientist 47: 658–698.
Ladd, Helen F., Rosemary Chalk, and Janet S. Hansen. 1999. Equity and adequacy in education finance: Issues and perspectives. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Lamber, Julia C., Pamela Barnhouse Walters, Jean C. Robinson, and Emily Meanwell. 2009. Equality talk, claims making, and educational reform: Reconsidering 1996. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, Denver.
Lardner, George, Jr. 1972. CORE leaders assail black caucus. Washington Post, February 11, p. A3.
Leonard, Lee. 1997. Budget process to go on. Columbus Dispatch Mar 26: 1A.
Levitsky, Sandra R. 2008. ‘What rights?’ The construction of political claims to American health care entitlements. Law and Society Review 42: 551–590.
Lieberman, Robert C. 1998. Shifting the color line: Race and the American welfare state. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lieberman, Robert C. 2002. Ideas, institutions, and political order: Explaining political change. American Political Science Review 96: 697–712.
Los Angeles Times. 1972a. Public education comes first. Los Angeles Times, July 12, p. D6.
Los Angeles Times. 1972b. Education and unity. Los Angeles Times, December 31, p. B2.
Maeroff, Gene I. 1972. A call for federal funds; public schools. New York Times, July 9, p. E7.
Mahoney, James. 2000. Path dependence in historical sociology. Theory and Society 29: 507–548.
Manza, Jeff. 2000. Political sociological models of the U.S. New Deal. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 297–322.
McCann, Michael W. 1994. Rights at work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McDonnell, Lorraine M. 2007. The politics of education: Influencing policy and beyond. In The state of education policy research, eds. Susan H. Fuhrman, David K. Cohen, and Fritz Mosher, 19–39. Mahway: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McLarin, Kimberly. 1996. Ohio paying some tuition for religious school students. New York Times, August 28, p. B9.
Miller, Julie. 1996. Schools, choices and tax dollars. New York Times, January 21, Section 13CN, p. 1.
Milliken v. Bradley 418 U.S. 717 (1974).
Minow, Martha. 2010. In Brown’s wake: Legacies of America’s landmark legislation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mintrom, Michael. 2000. Policy entrepreneurs and school choice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Moe, Terry M. 2001. Schools, vouchers, and the American public. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
National Commission on Excellence in Education. 1983. A nation at risk: The imperative for education reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
New York Times. 1972. Record of major Nixon legislative proposals and of action taken in the second session of 92d congress. New York Times, October 20, p. 24.
Oakes, Jeannie. N.d. Educational inadequacy, inequality, and failed social policy: A synthesis of expert reports prepared for Williams v. State of California. An expert report submitted on behalf of the plaintiffs. Retrieved May 24, 2006 (http://www.decentschools.org/expert_reports/oakes_report.pdf).
O’Brien, Molly Townes. 1997. Private school vouchers and the realities of racial politics. Temple Law Review 359: 372–394.
Ogletree, Charles. 2004a. All too deliberate. In The unfinished agenda of Brown v. Board of education, ed. James Anderson et al., 45–60. Hoboken: Wiley.
Ogletree, Charles. 2004b. All deliberate speed: Reflections on the first half-century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: W. W. Norton.
Oliver, Pamela E., and Hank Johnston. 2000. What a good idea! Frames and ideologies in social movement research. Mobilization 4: 37–54.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial formation in the United States. Boston: Routledge.
Orfield, Gary, Susan Eaton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation. 1996. Dismantling desegregation: The quiet reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: The New Press.
Orfield, Gary and Chungmei Lee. 2004. Brown at 50: King’s dream or Plessy’s nightmare? Harvard University: The Civil Rights Project (http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg04/brown50.pdf).
Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. The politics of pensions: A comparative analysis of Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1880–1940. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Orren, Karen, and Stephen Skowronek. 2004. The search for American Political Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Paris, Michael. 2001. Legal mobilization and the politics of reform: Lessons from school finance litigation in Kentucky, 1984–1995. Law and Social Inquiry 26: 631–684.
Patterson, James T. 2001. Brown v. Board of Education: A civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Payne, Charles M. 2008. So much reform, so little change: The persistence of failure in urban schools. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pedriana, Nicholas, and Robin Stryker. 1997. Political culture wars 1960s style: Equal employment opportunity-affirmative action law and the Philadelphia plan. American Journal of Sociology 103: 633–691.
Peterson, Paul E., and William G. Howell. 2004. Efficiency, bias, and classification schemes: A response to Alan B. Kreuger and Pei Zhu. American Behavioral Scientist 47: 699–717.
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the welfare state? Reagan, Thatcher, and the politics of retrenchment. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pierson, Paul. 2000. Increasing returns: Path dependence and the study of politics. American Political Science Review 94: 251–267.
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in time: History, institutions, and social analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Polletta, Francesca. 2000. The structural context of novel rights claims: Southern civil rights organizing, 1961–1966. Law and Society Review 34: 367–406.
Quadagno, Jill. 1988. The transformation of old age security. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Quadagno, Jill. 1994. The color of welfare: How racism undermined the war on poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Quadagno, Jill. 2005. One nation, uninsured: Why the U.S. has no national health insurance. New York: Oxford University Press.
Raftery, Adrian E., and Michael Hout. 1993. Maximally maintained inequality: Educational stratification in Ireland. Sociology of Education 65(January): 41–62.
Ravitch, Diane. 2000. Left back: A century of failed school reforms. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Reed, Douglas S. 2001a. On equal terms: The constitutional politics of educational opportunity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Reed, Douglas S. 2001b. Not in my schoolyard: Localism and public opposition to funding schools equally. Social Science Quarterly 82: 34–50.
Reese, William J. 1986. Power and the promise of school reform. Boston: Routledge.
Rich, Wilbur C. 1996. Black mayors and school politics: The failure of reform in Detroit, Gary, and Newark. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Rose v. Council for Better Educ. Inc., 790 S.W.2d 186, 194 (Ky. 1989).
Rose, Lowell C. and Alec M. Gallup. 2002. The 34th annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 41–57.
Rosenthal, Jack. 1972. Major integration test confronts U.S. in 1972. New York Times, January 20, p. 1.
Ryan, James E. 1999a. Schools, race, and money. Yale Law Journal 109: 249.
Ryan, James E. 1999b. The influence of race in school finance reform. Michigan Law Review 98: 432–481.
Ryan, James E., and Michael Heise. 2002. Taking school choice to the suburbs. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 7, p. B1.
Ryan, James E. 2010. Five miles away a world apart: One city, two schools, and the story of educational opportunity in modern America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Saltman, Kenneth J. 2007. Capitalizing on disaster: Taking and breaking public schools. Herndon: Paradigm Publishers.
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).
San Miguel, Guadalupe. 1982. Mexican American organizations and the changing politics of school desegregation in Texas, 1945 to 1980. Social Science Quarterly 63: 701–715.
San Miguel, Guadalupe. 1983. The struggle against separate and unequal schools: Middle class Mexican Americans and the desegregation campaign in Texas, 1929–1957. History of Education Quarterly 23: 343–359.
Schragger, Richard. 2007. San Antonio v. Rodriguez and the Legal Geography of School Finance Reform. University of Virginia Law School, Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series, Paper # 64. Retrieved July 23, 2007 (http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1104&context=uvalwps).
Semple, Robert B., Jr. 1972. Nixon asks bill imposing halt in new busing orders; seeks education equality. New York Times, March 17, p. 1.
Serrano v. Priest, 487 P.2d 1241, 1246 (Cal. 1971), (Serrano I).
Serrano v. Priest, 557 P.2d 929, 931 (Cal. 1976), (Serrano II).
Shanahan, Eileen. 1972. 2 Parties push nonpublic school aid with bill for tax credits to parents. New York Times, August 7, p. 19.
Shokraii, Nina. 1996. Free at last: Black America signs up for school choice. Policy Review 80: 20–26.
Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Skocpol, Theda. 1995. Social policy in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Skocpol, Theda, and Edwin Amenta. 1986. States and social policies. Annual Review of Sociology 12: 131–157.
Sloan, Kris. 2008. The expanding educational services sector: Neoliberalism and the corporatization of curriculum at the local level in the U.S. Journal of Curriculum Studies 40: 555–578.
Spring, Joel. 1972. Education and the rise of the corporate state. Boston: Beacon.
Stephens, John D. 1979. The transition from capitalism to socialism. New York: MacMillan.
Stevens, Mitchell. 2001. Kingdom of children: Culture and controversy in the homeschooling movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Strong, David, Pamela Barnhouse Walters, Brian Driscoll, and Scott Rosenberg. 2000. Leveraging the state: Private money and the development of public education for blacks. American Sociological Review 65: 658–681.
Stryker, R. 2001. Disparate impact and the quota debates: Law, labor market sociology, and equal employment policies. Sociological Quarterly 42: 13–46.
Tedin, Kent. 1994. Self-interest, symbolic values, and the financial equalization of the public schools. Journal of Politics 56: 628–649.
Tyack, David, and Lary Cuban. 1995. Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The Crisis. 2001. The NAACP Today. The Crisis. Sept/Oct, p. 73.
Toth, Robert C. 1972. Nixon asks congress to bar new racial busing orders. Los Angeles Times, March 17, p. A1.
Urban, Wayne, and Jennings Wagoner. 2000. American education: A history, 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse. 2001. Educational access and the state: Historical continuities and discontinuities in racial inequality in American education. Sociology of Education, Special Issue: 35–49.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse. 2007. Explaining the durable racial divide in American Education: Policy development and opportunity hoarding from Brown to vouchers. Presented at The Conference on the Social Dimensions of Inequality Sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, UCLA, January.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Josh Klugman, Jenny Stuber, and Michael Rosenbaum. 2003. Race, redistribution, and Americans’ educational policy preferences. Presented at The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August, Atlanta.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Julia C. Lamber, and Jean C. Robinson. 2008. American political culture and discourses of equality: How can separate be equal? Presented at The Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association, June, Montreal.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Julia C. Lamber, Jean C. Robinson, and Emily Meanwell. 2009a. Equality talk, claims making, and educational reform: Reconsidering 1972. Presented at The Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Vancouver.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Julia C. Lamber, Jean C. Robinson, and Emily Meanwell. 2009b. Political discourse and policy regime change: Constructions of deservedness in education reforms, 1972 to 1996. Presented at The Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association, Chicago.
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, Julia C. Lamber, Jean C. Robinson, and Julie Swando. 2009c. Policy development, political culture, and the courts: The cases of school finance reform in Kentucky and Ohio. Presented at The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco.
Washington Post. 1972. On court orders and school budgets. Washington Post, August 17, p. A18.
Wentworth, Eric. 1972. Black caucus affirms its support for busing. Washington Post, March 16, p. A1.
Wilkins, Roy. 1972. Nixon: Principal polarizer of the races. Los Angeles Times, June 6, p. D7.
Wilson, Steven H. 2003. Brown over ‘other white’: Mexican Americans’ legal arguments and litigation strategy in school desegregation lawsuits. Law and History Review, 21(1).
Wolfe, Alan. 2003. The irony of school choice: Liberals, conservatives, and the new politics of race. In School choice: The moral debate, ed. Alan Wolfe, 31–50. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wong, Kenneth S. 1999. Funding public schools: Politics and policies. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Wooten, James T. 1970. CORE gives up integration to back separatism. New York Times, September 7, p. 1.
Wrigley, Julia. 1982. Class politics and public schools: Chicago, 1900–1950. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).
Zernike, Kate. 2002. Vouchers: A shift, but just how big? New York Times, June 30, section 4, p. 3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walters, P.B. (2011). Toward a Theory of the Political Construction of Empty Spaces in Public Education. In: Hallinan, M. (eds) Frontiers in Sociology of Education. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1576-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1576-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1575-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1576-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)