"The United States today is a suburban nation that thinks of race as an urban issue, and often assumes that it has been largely solved," write the editors of this groundbreaking and passionately argued book. They show that the locus of racial and ethnic transformation is now clearly suburban and illustrate patterns of demographic change in the suburbs with a series of rich case studies. The book concludes by considering what kinds of strategies school officials and community leaders can pursue at all levels to improve opportunities for suburban low-income students and students of color, and what ways address the challenges associated with demographic change.

"The United States today is a suburban nation that thinks of race as an urban issue, and often assumes that it has been largely solved,” write the editors of this groundbreaking and passionately argued book. They show that the locus of racial and ethnic transformation is now clearly suburban and illustrate patterns of demographic change in the suburbs with a series of rich case studies. The book concludes by considering what kinds of strategies school officials and community leaders can pursue at all levels to improve opportunities for suburban low-income students and students of color, and what ways address the challenges associated with demographic change.

Confronting a reality that many policy makers would prefer to ignore, contributors to this volume offer the latest information on the trend toward the racial and socioeconomic resegregation of southern schools. In the region that has achieved more widespread public school integration than any other since 1970, resegregation, combined with resource inequities and the current "accountability movement," is now bringing public education in the South to a critical crossroads. In thirteen essays, leading thinkers in the field of race and public education present not only the latest data and statistics on the trend toward resegregation but also legal and policy analysis of why these trends are accelerating, how they are harmful, and what can be done to counter them. What's at stake is the quality of education available to both white and nonwhite students, they argue. This volume will help educators, policy makers, and concerned citizens begin a much-needed dialogue about how America can best educate its increasingly multiethnic student population in the twenty-first century. Contributors: Karen E. Banks, Wake County Public School System, Raleigh, N.C. John Charles Boger, University of North Carolina School of Law Erwin Chemerinsky, Duke Law School Charles T. Clotfelter, Duke University Susan Leigh Flinspach, University of California, Santa Cruz Erica Frankenberg, Harvard Graduate School of Education Catherine E. Freeman, U.S. Department of Education Jay P. Heubert, Teachers College, Columbia University Jennifer Jellison Holme, University of California, Los Angeles Michal Kurlaender, Harvard Graduate School of Education Helen F. Ladd, Duke University Luis M. Laosa, Kingston, N.J. Jacinta S. Ma, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Gary Orfield, Harvard Graduate School of Education Gregory J. Palardy, University of Georgia john a. powell, Ohio State University Sean F. Reardon, Stanford University Russell W. Rumberger, University of California, Santa Barbara Benjamin Scafidi, Georgia State University David L. Sjoquist, Georgia State University Jacob L. Vigdor, Duke University Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University John T. Yun, University of California, Santa Barbara

List of Oral History and Interview Participants -- Notes -- Index

The first major battle over school choice came out of struggles over equalizing and integrating schools in the civil rights era, when it became apparent that choice could be either a serious barrier or a significant tool for reaching these goals. The second large and continuing movement for choice was part of the very different anti-government, individualistic, market-based movement of a more conservative period in which many of the lessons of that earlier period were forgotten, though choice was once again presented as the answer to racial inequality. This book brings civil rights back into the center of the debate and tries to move from doctrine to empirical research in exploring the many forms of choice and their very different consequences for equity in U.S. schools. Leading researchers conclude that although helping minority children remains a central justification for choice proponents, ignoring the essential civil rights dimensions of choice plans risks compounding rather than remedying racial inequality.

Do charter schools strengthen students’ educational experience? What are their social costs? This volume brings together a group of premier researchers to address questions about the purposes of charter schools and the role of public policy in shaping the educational agenda. Chapter authors explore topics seldom encountered in the current charter school debate, such as the challenges faced by charter schools in guaranteeing students civil rights and other legal protections; the educational and social implications of current instructional programs designed specifically for low-income and minority students; the use of charters as school turnaround agents; and other issues that lie at the intersection of education, politics, and social policy. Readers across the political spectrum, both supporters and critics of charter schools, can use this book to inform public policy about the ways in which charters affect diversity and inequality and the potential to devise policies that mitigate the most troublesome social costs of charter schools. Book Features: Examines how charter schools affect diversity and equity in U.S. schools. Describes how segregation plays out by race, ethnicity, and income; by disability and language-minority status; and by culture, language, and religion. Considers charter schools within a broader social context of high poverty rates, changing demographics, and continued housing and school segregation. Examines charter schools in the context of a new federal administration that is forging its own path in education and other domains of social policy. Includes some of the most prominent researchers and commentators in the field spanning policy research traditions, methodological approaches, and theoretical perspectives.

How we provide equal educational opportunity to an increasingly diverse, highly urbanized student population is one of the central concerns facing our nation. As Genevieve Siegel-Hawley argues in this thought-provoking book, within our metropolitan areas we are currently allowing a labyrinthine system of school-district boundaries to divide students--and opportunities--along racial and economic lines. Rather than confronting these realities, though, most contemporary educational policies focus on improving schools by raising academic standards, holding teachers and students accountable through test performance, and promoting private-sector competition. Siegel-Hawley takes us into the heart of the metropolitan South to explore what happens when communities instead focus squarely on overcoming the educational divide between city and suburb. Based on evidence from metropolitan school desegregation efforts in Richmond, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, between 1990 and 2010, Siegel-Hawley uses quantitative methods and innovative mapping tools both to underscore the damages wrought by school-district boundary lines and to raise awareness about communities that have sought to counteract them. She shows that city-suburban school desegregation policy is related to clear, measurable progress on both school and housing desegregation. Revisiting educational policies that in many cases were abruptly halted--or never begun--this book will spur an open conversation about the creation of the healthy, integrated schools and communities critical to our multiracial future.