April 16

What happens when teachers and community members are at odds,

and what values are at stake? The 1960s

Fantini, et. al., Community Control and the Urban School,

chapter 1 (group 1), chapter 5 (group 2), chapter 6 (group 3)

Primary sources: Teachers v. community member on the NYC strike (all read)

After decades of attempting to force their way into the existing social order only to meet intense white resistance and oppression, many blacks became disillusioned with integration to the point of disdain. Instead of seeing social/educational integration as the answer to black America’s problems, some redefined it as a philosophy that ignored questions of power and worked to usurp the black community of the skills and energies of its most productive members. Doubts about the federal government’s dedication to improving the conditions of blacks, suspicions regarding the extent to which white liberals could be considered true allies, and the large discrepancy between expected results and actual achievements produced a shift in ideas on the proper tactics and means to gain black liberation. Many blacks grew frustrated with the slow pace of change and demanded more power, real power, black power.

We will talk more about the nature of the Black Power Movement during class, but it is important read this week’s assignments with this brief introduction to the movement in mind. Blacks in the North, for the most part, attended de facto segregated schools (which means they were segregated by custom/circumstance rather than by law), lived in segregated parts of cities, and remained outside the centers of power.

In New York City, eight percent of the teaching force and three percent of school administrators were black despite black/Puerto Rican student enrollment of over fifty percent, whites (including Jews) fled to outer-boroughs leaving certain areas almost exclusively black or Puerto Rican, black classrooms sometimes had as many as 55 pupils (a number unheard of at white schools), black students dropped out at a rate double that of the city as a whole, black students read at a level almost two years behind the city’s white students, and more experienced teachers clustered in the white schools while black and Puerto Rican children were taught by teachers who had received their degrees less than five years prior. Refusing to believe that their children were genetically or cultural deficient and frustrated by constant and continual defeat of various schools desegregation plans, activist parents demanded community control as a way to improve the quality of education and life chances for their children.

At the same time, New York City teachers wanted to protect their professional status and job security. For all practical purposes, the UFT co-managed the public school system with the board of education. They had won important victories including the prevention of involuntary transfers, control of the curriculum guidelines, and the use of a standardized test to place teachers on teaching rolls (Jews, in particular, fought hard for the implementation of the standardized test since the previous system of nepotism kept them out of the teaching profession). These white teachers, who had often seen themselves as allies with the black community in the battle against inequality and racism now found that their defense of competitive individualism (which was made real in the tracking of students), their promotion of a “moderate” brand of cultural pluralism (akin to James Banks’ contributionist or additive levels of multicultural education), and their refusal to entertain community control of schools placed them in direct conflict with their students and their students families.

As you might imagine, the battle over school control was heated and involved the thorny issues of race/ethnicity, economic class, privilege, and power.

Each group will read a separate chapter on the New York City story. The primary sources (which all of you will read) are letters and documents produced during the battle over decentralization. They include the voices of teachers, committees, and teacher’s unions and demonstrate both the issues/values at stake and the heated nature of those issues/values. These, along with your individual chapters, will give you fodder to complete your written assignment.

When you do the reading, ask yourself:

  • How can you work effectively with the community?
  • How can you use Labaree’s framework (democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility) to make sense of the values at stake and discussed in each of the chapters?

Group 1 (Chapter 1)

Your chapter charts the battle for desegregation in New York City and at I.S. 201 in particular, something the other groups will not read. You will need to teach them about it. Also, the authors state that the battle in Ocean Hill-Brownsville “shatters traditionally clear lines between liberal and conservative thought.” What do they mean by that? Can you think of contemporary examples that drive the point home (if you, in fact, agree with the point)? You will need to teach your classmates about that, too.

Group 2 (Chapter 5)

Your chapter examines the Bundy Report, a document that laid the groundwork for school decentralization to occur in New York City, something the other groups will not read. You will need to teach them about it (including the four categories of recommendations in the report). What do you make of the categories and how they purport to improve the quality of schooling and community input? What do you make of the opposition to the Bundy Report? You will have to explain this to your classmates, too.

Group 3 (Chapter 6)

Your chapter examines the attempted implementation of community control in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of New York City. It is in your chapter that the battle between teachers and community members is most vivid, and you will need to teach your classmates about it. (the Bundy Report is mentioned in your chapter but not discussed in full; you do not need to know the intimacies of it to comprehend your chapter). The authors mention a turning point when the United Federation of Teachers sided with administrators (the “establishment”) rather than parents and, in large measure, alienated themselves from the community. What do you make of that claim? How do you understand the “natural alliances” of teachers unions today?