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56 books match the query 'Public schools' and 3 start with p

cover of Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City

Power, Protest, and the Public Schools

Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City

Melissa F. Weiner

Rutgers University Press, 2012

Accounts of Jewish immigrants usually describe the role of education in helping youngsters earn a higher social position than their parents. Melissa F. Weiner argues that New York City schools did not serve as pathways to mobility for Jewish or African American students. Instead, at different points in the city's history, politicians and administrators erected similar racial barriers to social advancement by marginalizing and denying resources that other students enjoyed. Power, Protest, and the Public Schools explores how activists, particularly parents and children, responded to inequality; the short-term effects of their involvement; and the long-term benefits that would spearhead future activism. Weiner concludes by considering how today's Hispanic and Arab children face similar inequalities within public schools.
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cover of Public Education and Social Reform: A History of the Illinois Education Association

Public Education and Social Reform

A History of the Illinois Education Association

Thomas J. Suhrbur

University of Illinois Press, 2025

Founded in 1853, the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and its predecessors have played a vital role in shaping the Illinois public school system. Thomas J. Suhrbur’s history covers the lifespan of the IEA within the larger story of state public education as a battleground for contentious social and economic issues.

Suhrbur pays particular attention to the impact of race, gender, religion, and tax policy on the IEA and public schools. He also examines the IEA’s evolution from a professional organization controlled by administrations and officials through its radical transformation into a teacher-led independent labor union. As a workers’ organization, the IEA successfully fought for collective bargaining and organized K–12 and higher education while continually standing against right-wing efforts to privatize education and undermine public schools with vouchers, for-profit institutions, and tax credits.

Multifaceted and up to date, Public Education and Social Reform tells the story of the organization and figures dedicated to sustaining and advancing Illinois public education.

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cover of Public Schools, Private Governance: Education Reform and Democracy in New Orleans

Public Schools, Private Governance

Education Reform and Democracy in New Orleans

J. Celeste Lay

Temple University Press, 2022

Two months after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana took control of nearly all the public schools in New Orleans. Today, all of the city’s public schools are charter schools. Although many analyses mark the beginning of education reform in New Orleans with Katrina, in Public Schools, Private Governance, J. Celeste Layargues that the storm merely accelerated the timeline for reforms that had inched along incrementally over the previous decade. Both before and after Katrina, white reformers purposely excluded Black educators, community members, and parents.

Public Schools, Private Governance traces the slow, deliberate dismantling of New Orleans’ public schools, and the processes that have maintained the reforms made in Katrina’s immediate aftermath, showing how Black parents and residents were left without a voice and the officials charged with school governance, most of whom are white, with little accountability. Lay cogently explains how political minorities disrupted systems to create change and keep reforms in place, and the predictable political effects—exclusion, frustration, and resignation—on the part of those most directly affected.

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