Making Schools Work: Lessons From Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster 50 Years After His Assassination

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Fourteen
  In Roundtable Session: School Leadership: Looking at History and Innovating for the Future (Table 1)

Abstract

2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth and 50th anniversary of the assassination of Marcus Foster, the first African American big city school superintendent, and arguably, one of the greatest 20th century education leaders.
Using documentary evidence, Foster’s (1971) account titled Making Schools Work, and published research, I have three purposes.
Most important, I summarize Foster’s remarkable career, making a case that many “recent” reforms and currents in educational leadership were pioneered by Foster in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, I attempt to explain why Foster is largely forgotten today. Relatedly, echoing Spencer (2012), I frame Foster’s career as hybridizing progressive and conservative (or neoliberal) approaches to urban school leadership. This makes Foster an ideological and historical orphan.

Author

• Robert A. Maranto, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author