Synopsis:
"A Different View of Urban Schools" tells a fascinating story about the realities of urban education in America. It provides new insights on teacher selection and preparation, curriculum, school takeovers, federal legislation, the role of business, and the impact of the civil rights movement on urban schools. The result is a new perspective on what educational reform requires in American cities. This book will be useful to teachers, policy makers, school board members, and parents, as well as classes in multicultural education, ethnic studies, and the social foundations of education.
Review:
« Kitty Kelly Epstein is a bold and visionary activist, educator, and storyteller. In this clear account, she analyzes a history of racism in education politics in order to argue for a living, active, and inclusive democracy. She shows us convincingly that, only by being honest about racism in our past and present, can we construct the excellent schools that urban communities want and deserve. -- Christine Sleeter
« Some U.S. policy makers were so disturbed by the power of the Civil Rights Movement that they have been revising the story ever since, implying that African American leadership did not accomplish much of substance, especially in the field of education. In this book, Kitty Kelly Epstein presents a clear record of African American achievement in challenging inequity, even in an arena as filled with confusion as the world of U.S. public schools." -- Danny Glover
« Kitty Epstein tells a fascinating revisionist history of the evolution and struggles around public education. She is uniquely qualified to do so, as a central participant in the events, and as a theorist of the impact of racism in American education. Epstein joins the short list of social scientists who have studied their problem by embedding themselves in it personally. The result is to provide a new perspective on what educational reform requires in American cities. -- John Roemer
"Parents, teachers and social activists should read 'A Different View of Urban School'. It describes the little known racial roots of standardized testing; the challenge of the northern Civil Rights Movement to institutionalized racism in American education; the success of this ongoing movement in challenging the tracking system, racist textbooks, and the lack of teachers of color; and the undemocratic maneuvers of conservative sectors of the white business community who were intent on returning urban school districts to their control." -- Hari Dillon
« Kitty Kelly Epstein's scholarship is embedded in her lifetime of active engagement in the educational civil rights struggle. Kelly Epstein deconstructs, chapter and verse, the many 'urban myths' about public schools held by both liberals and conservatives and posits an alternate argument based on « five, basic, unchanging and generally unmentioned realities about U.S. education... Epstein's book is imbued with a 'critical hope' based on her existential understanding that without struggle at both the school and societal levels, there is no educational progress. She argues persuasively that rigorous critique and struggles within schools, school systems, and the society at large can provide the momentum for transformative educational and social change. Having chronicled the past successes of such progressive struggles in Oakland, she outlines the makings of a multiracial, « people's program for educational change. Her book is a clear-noted reveille for the necessary national movement for education as a civil right. -- Luis O. Reyes
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