Steering Success: Highly Effective, Majority-Black Charter Schools and Their Leaders

• In Event: 41.074 - Educational Gatekeepers: How Capital and Organizational Structures Endorse or Impede Equal Opportunities

Abstract

Ronald Edmonds (1973), a Harvard lecturer who spent many years as a school superintendent and the pioneer of the “effective schools” research, argued that the focus of school integration all too narrowly focused on racial parity rather than academic achievement. The integration movement, which came about through the singular efforts of white liberals and members of the black middle-class, inadvertently ignored the needs of poor black families and communicated to society at large that effective, academically rigorous, and successful schools in black communities were not possible. However, the wealth of data available to us in the growing charter school movement and its unique role in black students’ education and achievement presents a counter-narrative and picture of the success of these schools of choice in predominantly black communities.

Author

• Calista Kelly, Claremont Graduate University