This article outlines the development of the 1990 Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, for several years the only publicly funded K–12 voucher program in the United States. The program comprised an alliance of neoliberal reformers who sought to extend competitive markets to public education and Milwaukee-based supporters of a handful of inner-city “independent community schools” enrolling black and Latino students. Five factors generated this conditional alliance: dissatisfaction among many black Milwaukeeans with the Milwaukee Public Schools; the efforts of multicultural supporters of community schools who had sought public funding for two decades; the growth of black political power in Milwaukee during an era of rightward-tilting state policies, as personified by state representative Polly Williams; the actions of Governor Tommy Thompson to craft neoliberal and neoconservative social policy; and the rise of Milwaukee's Bradley Foundation as the nation's premier conservative grantmaker. This article suggests that, even given the serendipitous alignment of forces necessary for Milwaukee parental choice, the establishment of voucher programs in other large cities remains a distinct possibility.
This study addresses changes in the public conversation on school desegregation since the early 1970s. It applies the concept of discursive opportunity structure to the debates on desegregation in order to illustrate how a dynamic and balanced conversation, which involved both positive and negative views on the policy, has evolved into an anemic and overly negative one. The study relies on insights from social movement research on political opportunity structures for debates on contentious issues and on interpretive framing processes. Several inferences are offered on the nature of the discursive turn in desegregation at the national level, followed by a detailed analysis of desegregation and resegregation in Cleveland from 1973 to 1998. This involves the systematic examination of local newspaper coverage and also draws on court documents, administrative student records, and census information. The findings suggest that political and social structural factors that have restricted the chances for a balanced conversation have also complicated desegregation implementation and may have undermined the policy’s intended student benefits. By the 1990s even the most dedicated advocates had withdrawn from the debate, allowing the conversation to atrophy and become dominated by critical views. As a result, public education has risked failing to address the ill effects of resegregation and to produce reforms that foster quality schools for all.
This is a delightful compilation that spans from the first educational stir rings in the Old Northwest to renewed state-level involvement since 1980. To those with only a passing familiarity with Indiana, the book obliges with fresh looks at student culture in "Middletown" (Muncie's Central High School) and at the popularity of boys' high school basketball. The two cover photographs are most inviting: at the top is a town high school from 1900 in Second Empire style with a globe and a telescope atop the towers, at the bottom is a 1973 middle school of steel-reinforced concrete. The "people's college" is whimsical in its projection of the promise of enhghtenment. The middle school is bunker-like, as if educators and students are hunkering down in their open classrooms, protected from an unstable world. The book fills a gap in Indiana school history-the only other booklength studies were written before Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin called for a more critical, rigorous, and expansive scholarship. Most of the chapters stand within a revisionist current that stresses social control tem pered by cultural conflict. Since most of the new history of American edu cation focuses on cities or particular topics, Hoosier Schools also breaks new ground by taking a traditional topic, state history, and treating it critically. William J. Reese edited this volume and wrote two chapters; his influence is unmistakable. Most other contributors are his former students. In the introduction, Reese suggests that the cautious and incremen tal "Indiana Way" of reforming schools is also "the American Way." At a general level, this thesis makes sense, as "the power of tradition and slow ness of institutional response" are almost always with us (p. xiv). But I wish that the introduction and some of the chapters also stressed more of Indi ana's uniqueness. In The Indiana Way (1986), James H. Madison asserts that Indiana's educational development has often lagged behind other midwestern states. In antebellum Indiana the common-school movement was slow to develop and literacy rates were lower. Current funding per student continues to trail the national average. The interplay between Indiana school histoiy as American education writ small and as Hoosier variation is a theme that deserves more systematic emphasis. Chapters are arranged chronologically and hang together well. Scott Walter challenges the traditional interpretation of the growth of the Hoosier common schools, which holds that Caleb Mills single-handedly translated his vision into statewide consensus, by showing how a variety of reform ers, of whom Mills was only the most prominent, percolated the common school idea throughout the state. Reese's chapter on the Victorian era details how urban school leaders molded the common school ideal into a bureau cratic "culture of professionalism" that even the smallest towns embraced
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