Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Education StateOver the past fifty years, the federal government's efforts to reform American public education have transformed U.S. schools from locally-run enterprises into complex systems jointly constructed by federal, state, and local actors. The construction of this federal schoolhouse-an educational system with common national expectations and practices-has fundamentally altered both education politics and the norms governing educational policy at the local level. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines these issues through an in-depth, fifty-year examination of federal educational policies in the community of Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy yet socially diverse suburb of Washington, D.C. The epochal social transformations that swept through America in the past half century hit Alexandria with particular force, transforming its Jim Crow school system into a new immigrant gateway district within two generations. Along the way, the school system has struggled to provide quality education for special needs students, and has sought to overcome the legacies of tracking and segregated learning while simultaneously retaining upper-middle class students. Most recently, it has grappled with state and federally imposed accountability measures that seek to boost educational outcomes. All of these policy initiatives have contended with the existing political regime within Alexandria, at times forcing it to a breaking point, and at other times reconstructing it. All the while, the local expectations and governing realities of administrators, parents, politicians, and voters have sharply constrained federal initiatives, limiting their scope when in conflict with local commitments and amplifying them when they align. Through an extensive use of local archives, contemporary accounts, school data, and interviews, Douglas S. Reed not only paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that the federal schoolhouse's creation has wrought in Alexandria, but also documents the successes of the federal commitment to greater educational opportunity. In so doing, he highlights the complexity of the American education state and the centrality of local regimes and local historical context to federal educational reform efforts. |
Contents
1 The Local Politics of Federal Education Reform | 1 |
Part One
Race and Reform | 27 |
Part Two
The Local Politics of the Federal Commitment to Equality | 97 |
Part Three
The Politics of Accountability | 189 |
Notes | 257 |
293 | |
311 | |
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academic accountability achievement administrative African American students Albohm Alexandria City Public Alexandria City School Alexandria schools Arlington County Bilingual Education Bilingual Education Act black students busing challenge changes Child Left City Council City Public Schools City School Board city’s Civil Rights classroom court December 16 dents desegregation Education Act efforts elected elementary schools English English-learners enrollment federal government gifted and talented grade high school Ibid immigrant integration language Latino learning Lyles-Crouch Massive Resistance math meeting NCLB neighborhood parents percent percentage Perry political private school public education Public Schools Records racial regime result School Board members School Board Minutes school district school officials school system Schools Records Center secondary segregation social special education special needs standards Standards of Learning Superintendent T.C. Williams teachers test scores tion transformation U.S. Department Virginia voucher Washington Post white flight