Kenneth K. Wong

Amenities Drive Urban Growth

Studies of the city traditionally posit a division between a city’s economy and its culture, with culture subordinate in explanatory power to work. However, post–industrial and globalizing trends are dramatically elevating the importance of culture. Cultural activities are increasingly crucial to urban economic vitality. Models to explain the growth of cities from the era of industrial manufacturing are outmoded. Citizens in the postindustrial city increasingly make quality of life demands, treating their own urban location as if tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns. These practices impact considerations about the proper nature of amenities that post–industrial cities can sustain.

The Impact of Accountability on Racial and Socioeconomic Equity: Considering Both School Resources and Achievement Outcomes

This article examines whether performance-driven educational accountability policy enhances or hinders equity. Combining data from state policy surveys, F-33, SASS, and NAEP, the article shows that during the 1990s, the states did not address racial and socioeconomic disparities in school resources and failed to narrow the achievement gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups. The distributions of school expenditures, class size, qualified teachers, and mathematics achievement remained largely unchanged in strong accountability states. Although the accountability policy of the 1990s neither produced adverse effects nor brought about significant setbacks in equity, this article suggests that racial and socioeconomic equity were not at the center of accountability reforms and that performance-driven accountability policies alone cannot move us forward toward equity.

Politics of State-Led Reform in Education: Market Competition and Electoral Dynamics

State-led educational initiatives have gained prominence across the nation. In this study, the authors examine two very different types of reform-state adoption of charter school legislation and state implementation of school district take-over-to explore the proposition that the type of education reform a state chooses will be significantly affected by a states electoral dynamics, that is, the extent to which there is political competition or party dominance in a given state. The authors examine charter schools and school district takeover with the expectation that the factors leading to charter schools in a state will be different than the political climate in which takeover reform is realized. To test various hypotheses on the role of electoral dynamics in state-led reform, the authors use an event history analysis using pooled cross-sectional time-series and a traditional cross-sectional model using ordinary least square regression techniques.

Title I Schoolwide Programs: A Synthesis of Findings from Recent Evaluation.

Recent federal legislation, including the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act, has enabled broad expansion of Title I schoolwide programs to over 8,000 schools across the nation. These regulatory changes are intended to reduce the historically fragmented or categorical character of title I programs and improve the effectiveness of entire schools rather than targeting services to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged subpopulations. Despite the dramatic increase in the number of schoolwide programs, there is little comprehensive information about them and their effectiveness relative to traditional Title I programming. This article presents a synthesis of what is known about Title I schoolwide programs, focusing on three aspects: characteristics of schools and districts implementing schoolwide programs, programmatic and organizational characteristics of schoolwide program schools and districts, and evidence of the effectiveness of schoolwide program schools, particularly in terms of student performance. In addition to reviewing these evaluation findings, we present several cautions related to their interpretation. Finally, we suggest implications for future evaluations and discuss policy implications for school improvement.

Measuring the Effectiveness of City and State Takeover as a School Reform Strategy

n increasing number of states and cities are allowing fortakeovers of school districts,either by a state authority orby the mayor.Twenty-four states allow state takeovers oflocal school districts, permitting state officials to exert authorityover a district in the case of “academic bankruptcy” or woefullylow-performing schools.School district takeovers have occurred in18 states and the District of Columbia.Even in states without takeover laws, school district takeoversare becoming a high-profile issue. In Missouri, for instance, statelawmakers have considered a bill allowing for the immediatetakeover of the Kansas City school district. On the other side ofthe state,mayoral takeover of the school district became an impor-tant campaign issue during the 2001 St.Louis mayoral campaign,when five of the six candidates said “they wouldn’t hesitate to pushfor a takeover if the city’s schools lose their accreditation.” Even-tual winner Francis Slay warned that although he doesn’t want toimplement a takeover,“if partnership and cooperation don’t work,[he] won’t be afraid to take drastic action.”

Policy Expansion of School Choice in the American States

This research study explores the policy expansion of school choice within the methodological approach of event history analysis. The first section provides a comparative overview of state adoption of public school choice laws. After creating a statistical portrait of the contemporary landscape for school choice, the authors introduce event history analysis as a methodological solution to the problem of measuring policy expansion. Building on previous studies in the social science literature, we proceed to discuss political, economic, and social factors related to the passage of charter school laws. A multivariate analysis finds state adoption is significantly related to partisan gubernatorial control, classroom spending, private schools, education finance litigation, and minority representation. The final section discusses the empirical results in the modern policy environment and proposes future directions for comparative state research. We gratefully appreciate the helpful comments of Mark Berends, Jack Buckley, Will Doyle, Helen Ladd, Michael McLendon, Chris Mooney, Sean Nicholson-Crotty, Matthew Springer, and TimZeidner. This research study was conducted at the National Center on School Choice with financial support from the United States Department of Education (R305A040043). Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agency.

Brown v. Board of Education and the Coleman Report: Social Science Research and the Debate on Educational Equality

In light of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling, this article focuses on how the majority opinion in Brown set a precedent for the use of social science research in defining and examining inequity in education. This article argues that following Brown, social science research has gained prominence in its social function in shaping the debate in equal educational opportunity. Whereas Brown introduced racial desegregation in the governmental agenda, social science research since the 1960s has sustained the societal concerns on the challenge of inequality. This article examines how the use of social science research in Equality of Educational Opportunity (J. S. Coleman et al., 1966), an extensive study of schools and schooling under the direction of James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University and Ernest Campbell of Vanderbilt University during the mid 1960s, shaped the course of education research and policy toward the notion of equal educational opportunities. Further, this article discusses the more recent work of William Julius Wilson (1987) that shifts the equality of opportunity debate out of the courts and from individual and group opportunities to the equality of life chances.

Linking Governance Reform to Schooling Opportunities for the Disadvantaged

Public school systems are increasingly experimenting with decentralized governance. This article examines the extent to which decentralized governance at the school site has an impact on instructional and curricular organization for disadvantaged pupils at the classroom level Using descriptive information gathered from four inner-city elementary schools in Chicago and Albuquerque, this study finds that strong professional control over program decisions remains intact regardless of the extent of parental empowerment.

Politics and Governance: Evolving Systems of School Accountability

The politics of school accountability is significantly different between the time of the publication of the 1997 Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association and the current 2013 volume on accountability. During the mid-1990s, accountability lacked a focus and there was no clear institutional champion. With the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states and districts are governed by a common framework of accountability. Students, schools, districts, and states are held accountable for meeting annual academic proficiency standards or Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). As states and districts develop strategies to meet the accountability pressure, there is a need to examine the new politics of accountability. Authors in this volume have offered a useful knowledge base for pursuing this line of investigation. Further, I observe both enduring and new features on the politics and policy of accountability.

12. AMENITIES DRIVE URBAN GROWTH: A NEW PARADIGM AND POLICY LINKAGES

Studies of the city traditionally posit a division between a city’s economy and its culture, with culture subordinate in explanatory power to “work.” However, post-industrial and globalizing trends are dramatically elevating the importance of culture. Cultural activities are increasingly crucial to urban economic vitality. Models to explain the growth of cities from the era of industrial manufacturing are outmoded. Loss of heavy industry impacts the dynamics of urban growth, increasing the relative importance of the city both as a space of consumption and as a site for “production” which is distinctly symbolic/expressive. Some have seen globalization, the wired city, and electronic communication as destroying cities as proximity should decline in importance. This may be correct for some production concerns, but this in turn raises questions about consumption versus production decisions affecting urban growth and dynamics. Even in a former industrial power like Chicago, the number one industry has become entertainment, which city officials define to include tourism, conventions, restaurants, hotels, and related economic activities. Citizens in the postindustrial city increasingly make “quality of life” demands, treating their own urban location as if tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns. These practices impact considerations about the proper nature of amenities that post-industrial cities can sustain. The city increasingly becomes an Entertainment Machine, leveraging culture to enhance its economic well being. The entertainment components of cities are actively and strategically produced through political and economic processes. Entertainment becomes the work of many urban participants. We elaborate this theme in general and illustrate its force with case study materials from Chicago and a national study of U.S. mayors in cities over 25,000 in population.