72.046 - Learning From the Past: How Interdistrict Desegregation Policies Can Inform School Choice and Improvement Policies Today

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The session highlights a long standing yet under-examined type of school choice policy -- inter-district school desegregation policies -- which were adopted in a number of communities in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In this session, we explore how and why these policies were created, and we examine how such policies have been able to survive in a political environment that questions their relevance and where other market-based and colorblind policies have emerged to compete with-- or even undermine --these race-based efforts. Our goal is to highlight the important lessons that can be learned from these policies for educational policy today, despite the reduced focus on racial and socio-economic equity in today’s policy climate.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 4: School Choice and Other School and District Reform

Chair

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley

Papers

• Interdistrict Choice and Educational Policy - Jennifer Jellison Holme, The University of Texas - Austin; Kara S. Finnigan, University of Rochester

• Choice, Place, and Opportunity: A Case Study of the Saint Louis Student Transfer Program - Sarah Diem, University of Missouri

• Interdistrict Diversity Choice in Milwaukee: When Equity and Market-Based Choice Policies Collide - Jennifer Jellison Holme, The University of Texas - Austin

• Tinsley's Court-Ordered Student Transfers in California: Examining Race and Place - Nadine D. Hylton, University of Rochester; Kara S. Finnigan, University of Rochester

Discussants

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia

• Sonya Douglass Horsford, George Mason University