Legacies of the Civil Rights Era: Accountability and Attention to Poverty (John Spencer)
John P. Spencer is a former high school social studies teacher and an associate professor in the Education department at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform.
The past decade has brought a steady stream of commentary on how education is the “civil rights issue of our time,” most recently from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But education has been a civil rights issue for decades—and not just in Brown v. Board of Education or Little Rock, but in urban communities with low-performing schools.
Revisiting the 1960s shows us that the civil rightsera left a dual legacy in school reform, half of which echoes
The past decade has brought a steady stream of commentary on how education is the “civil rights issue of our time,” most recently from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But education has been a civil rights issue for decades—and not just in Brown v. Board of Education or Little Rock, but in urban communities with low-performing schools.
Revisiting the 1960s shows us that the civil rightsera left a dual legacy in school reform, half of which echoes