The Aftermath of the Community Control Movement in Central and East Harlem

• In Event: Harlem Stories: Contesting Educational Goals and Strategies for Reform in the 20th Century

Abstract

The research objective is to explore the complexities of New York City’s school decentralization era (1970-2002) in relationship to the social movement that preceded it. While there are a number of historical studies of the community control movement of the late 1960s, there are few histories of the decentralization era in New York City’s African American and Latino communities. One exception is Ira Katznelson’s study of the school board in Washington Heights during the 1970s. According to Katznelson, local school boards turned inward, causing local working-class communities to fight among themselves, rather than challenge the powerful citywide elite controlling their communities. Katznelson argues that local school boards faded into oblivion “after they had deflected the black movement from its radical, holistic, and redistributive possibilities.” This paper seeks to test this claim, and perhaps offer a revisionist account, through a historical interpretation of political and educational leadership in Central and East Harlem during the 1970s and 80s.This history is also relevant to current policy debates about mayoral control, charter schools, and community participation in educational policies.

The research considers the trajectory of local politics and instructional practices in two local community school districts in Central and East Harlem in the 1970s and 80s. The paper builds on an existing study of Community School District 4 in East Harlem. I trace District 4’s trajectory from the community control movement in the 1960s to the 1990s in my book, New York City Public Schools from Brownsville to Bloomberg: Community Control and Its Legacy. The book, however, does not consider the instructional and political trajectory of District 5. Based on preliminary research on District 5, it appears that one commonality between Districts 4 and 5 was the success of individual school leaders, many of them African American and Caribbean women.

This paper will attempt to understand the similarities and differences between Districts 4 and 5 through a study of educational leadership in schools, districts and the central school system. The historical sources will include oral histories as well as minutes from local and central school board meetings, school system archives, educators’ published articles, and media coverage. The study will be contextualized within broader educational policies as well as the socio-economic and political structures that shaped life in Central Harlem and East Harlem. While the paper will concentrate on the 70s and 80s, it will consider the longer educational history of the post-war period and also the current state of the schools in Central and East Harlem. The paper will conclude with an exploration of the relevance of this history to new proposals for community participation in New York City’s educational policymaking.

Author

• Heather Lewis, Pratt Institute