Over the past 50 years, the federal government's efforts to reform American public education have transformed U.S. schools from locally-run enterprises to complex systems in which federal, state and local actors jointly construct the educational environment of U.S. children. Through struggles over school integration, the growth of special education, the teaching of English learners and the rise of accountability politics, the federal role in U.S. education has meant a profound reconstruction of local expectations, roles and political alignments. Seeking to construct the federal schoolhouse - an educational system in which there are common national expectations and practices - has meant the creation of new modes of education within local institutions. The creation of this "education state " has also meant that federal educational initiatives have collided with - or reinforced - local political regimes in cities and suburbs alike. To the extent that "all politics is local, " the federal role in public schools has changed both the conduct and the norms of local educational politics. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines how increasing federal authority over public education in the U.S. changes the practices of 'operational localism' in education and how local regime commitments implement, thwart, or even block federal policy initiatives. The book examines these issues through an in-depth, fifty year examination of federal educational policies at work within one community, Alexandria, Virginia. The home of T.C. Williams High School, memorialized in the Hollywood movie Remember the Titans, Alexandria has been transformed within two generations from a Jim Crow school system to a new immigrant gateway school district with over 20 percent of its students English learners. Along the way, the school system has struggled to provide quality education for special needs students, sought to overcome the legacies of tracking and segregated learning and simultaneously retain upper-middle class students in this wealthy suburb of Washington, DC. 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 the local regime to a breaking point, and at times bolstering its reconstruction. At the same time, the local expectations and governing realities of administrators, parents, politicians and voters alike 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, Reed not only paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that the creation of the federal schoolhouse 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 efforts to reform education.

Turn the promise of equitable education into reality. This is your guidebook for building an antiracist school. Written by two education leaders with very different life experiences, Getting into Good Trouble At School provides the context, empowerment, and concrete actions needed to dismantle racist policies and practices that for decades have kept students of color from experiencing the same success as their white counterparts. The journeys of Gregory Hutchings and Douglas Reed - which include systemic racism and white privilege - provide a unique model superintendents, principals, school board members and other educators can use to reimagine educational equity, actively dismantle institutional racism, and implement strategic, methodical policies that benefit the entire school community. In this book you'll find A detailed case study of antiracist educational transformation What it really means to commit to racial equity Guidance for dismantling tracking and in-school segregation Positive, equitable alternatives to typical disciplinary practices Six steps to building an antiracist school system Racism isn't always intentional. Antiracism, on the other hand, must be. Now antiracist education leaders can put their intentions into action-and grant the promise of an equitable and culturally rich education to all students.

Since Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation battles of the 1960s and 1970s, the legal pursuit of educational opportunity in the United States has been framed largely around race. But for nearly thirty years now, a less-noticed but controversial legal campaign has been afoot to equalize or improve the resources of poorly funded schools. This book examines both the consequences of efforts to use state constitutional provisions to reduce the "resource segregation" of American schools and the politics of the opposition to these decisions.

"On Equal Terms" compares the relative success of school finance lawsuits to the project of school desegregation and explores how race and class present sharply different obstacles to courts. Since a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively deferred to the states in the matter of educational equity, about a third of state judiciaries have mandated reform of state-level educational funding systems. Douglas Reed analyzes both the rhetoric of reform and the varying effects of these controversial decisions while critiquing the courts' failure to more clearly define educational equity.

Well-written with keen insight throughout, the book concludes with an intriguing policy proposal that acknowledges obstacles to such efforts. This proposal aims to enhance education by fostering racial and economic integration locally. Setting the stage for a more coherent debate on this controversial issue and expanding our understanding of constitutional design, "On Equal Terms" will have far-reaching implications for law, public policy, politics, and not least, the future of American education.