Urban Education Reform and Minority Political Empowerment

Abstract

The quest for solutions for our failing urban schools has attracted the attention of parents, politicians, and business people as well as scholars and policy analysts concerned about the fate of our nation's schools.1 Increasingly, blame for failing inner-city schools is being pinned on school boards, which have been criticized as financially undisciplined, corrupt, unresponsive, and unaccountable to both the communities that they serve and to the government. Like many other urban school systems, the Chicago schools have experienced numerous problems over the years because of fiscal difficulties, deteriorating physical facilities, low student achievement scores, and accounts of administrative mismanagement of the school system. Low public confidence in the school board led Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago in 1995 to push successfully for an appointed school board in order to establish direct accountability to the city government. While some applaud the efforts of big-city mayors radically to reform their school boards, others contend that these efforts are cosmetic and that the financial crises faced by cities are the overriding factor behind the failure of urban school systems. At the same time that political reform is increasingly seen as an effective way to improve urban schools, minority groups have become increasingly in-