Creating the Suburban School Advantage

L. Rury John

Description

Creating the Suburban School Advantage explains how American suburban school districts gained a competitive edge over their urban counterparts. John L. Rury provides a national overview of the process, focusing on the period between 1950 and 1980, and presents a detailed study of metropolitan Kansas City, a region representative of trends elsewhere.While big-city districts once were widely seen as superior and attracted families seeking the best educational opportunities for their children, suburban school systems grew rapidly in the post-World War II era as middle-class and more affluent families moved to those communities. As Rury relates, at the same time, economically dislocated African Americans migrated from the South to center-city neighborhoods, testing the capacity of urban institutions. As demographic trends drove this urban-suburban divide, a suburban ethos of localism contributed to the socioeconomic exclusion that became a hallmark of outlying school systems. School districts located wholly or partly within the municipal boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri, make for revealing cases that illuminate our understanding of these national patterns.As Rury demonstrates, struggles to achieve greater educational equity and desegregation in urban centers contributed to so-called white flight and what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan considered to be a crisis of urban education in 1965. Despite the often valiant efforts made to serve inner city children and bolster urban school districts, this exodus, Rury cogently argues, created a new metropolitan educational hierarchy-a mirror image of the urban-centric model that had prevailed before World War II. The stubborn perception that suburban schools are superior, based on test scores and budgets, has persisted into the twenty-first century and instantiates today's metropolitan landscape of social, economic, and educational inequality.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• Misuri
• History of education
• 20th century
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• Missouri

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501748417
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

CREATINGTHESUBURBAN SCHOOL ADVANTAGE

Avolumeintheseries HistoriesofAmericanEducation EditedbyJonathanZimmerman

CREATINGTHE SUBURBAN SCHOOL ADVANTAGE Race,Localism,andInequalityinan American Metropolis

JohnL.Rury

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Rury, John L., 1951– author. Title:Creatingthesuburbanschooladvantage:race,localism,andinequality in an American metropolis / John L. Rury. Description:Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,2020.|Series:Historiesof American education | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019032213 (print) | LCCN 2019032214 (ebook) | ISBN|)bupe(0048470115789BNIS|)4c(olht057184939781 ISBN 9781501748417(pdf) Subjects:LCSH:Suburbanschools—Missouri—KansasCityMetropolitan Area—History. | Suburban schools—Kansas—Johnson County—History. | Discrimination in education—Missouri—Kansas City MetropolitanArea— History. | Discrimination in education—Kansas—JohnsonCounty—History. | Racism in education—Missouri—Kansas CityMetropolitan Area—History. | Racism in education—Kansas—JohnsonCounty—History. | Educational equalization—Missouri—Kansas CityMetropolitan Area—History. | Educational equalization—Kansas—JohnsonCounty—History. Classification:LCCLA318.K2R872020(print)|LCCLA318.K2(ebook)| DDC 371.0109778/411—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032213 LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2019032214

Contents

ListofIllustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations

Introduction:EducatingtheFragmentedMetropolis 1.  Suburban and Urban Schools: Two Sides of a National Metropolitan Coin 2.  Uniting and Dividing a Heartland Metropolis: Growth and Inequity in Postwar Kansas City 3. rTefsnaamronoitfrlGomceraTh:FlabrnanaUof School System 4. isMheTe:agntvadAdezilaicaRubbrnaosruiuS School Districts 5.  Conflict in Suburbia: Localism, Race, and Education in Johnson County, Kansas

Epilogue:AnEnduringLegacyofInequality

Appendix:StatisticalAnalysesandOralHistorySources Notes Index

vii ix xiii

1

18

44

76

105

133

157

185 195 247

Illustrations

Figures 1.1–1.4  Patterns of metropolitan divergence on selected dimensions, 1940–1980 2.1 odds of school success, 1980 Statistical

Maps 2.1  Kansas City, Missouri, annexations, 1947–1963 2.2  Metropolitan Kansas City school district boundaries, 1954 2.3–2.6 of metropolitan Kansas City’s African American Growth population, 1950–1980 2.7 Kansas City school district Metropolitan boundaries, 1980 2.8 distribution of adults with college Geospatial degrees, 1980 3.1–3.3  Kansas City public high schools and African American settlement, 1960, 1970, and 1980 4.1  Districts and schools in Kansas City and South Kansas City, 1980 4.2 years of annexations in North Kansas City, Fifty 1913–1963 5.1  Communities and schools upon formation of the Shawnee Mission District, 1971 E.1  Metropolitan Kansas City African American population, 2013–2017

vii

33

71

47

49

52

60

66

83

113

121

145

164

viiiILLUSTRATIONS

E.2 Kansas City, children living below the Metropolitan poverty level, 2013–2017 E.3  Metropolitan Kansas City, location of collegeeducated adults, 2013–2017

Tables 2.1  Postwar population growth in metropolitan Kansas City’s four core counties 2.2  Descriptive statistics, 1960: five geospatial areas 2.3 statistics, 1980: five geospatial areas Descriptive 3.1 enrollment by race, 1955–1980 KCMPS 3.2 from select KCMPS schools, 1962–1973 Transfers 3.3  Results of Missouri Basic Skills testing, 1978, in KCMPS and neighboring districts 4.1 metropolitan Missouri districts: growth and resources, KC 1954–55 to 1974–75 4.2 metropolitan school districts: economic, social, KC and demographic profiles, 1970 5.1  Social status indicators, select Johnson County communities, 1960 E.1 ACT scores and families in poverty Composite for Kansas and Missouri districts in Greater Kansas City, 2012 and 2013 A.1 adult education levels, 1960 Regression analysis, A.2  Regression analysis, adult education levels, 1980 A.3 junior year status or Binary logistic regression: higher, 17yearolds, 1980

166

167

59

65

65

84

85

99

108

109

138

170

186

187

191

Acknowledgments

Itisanoldchestnutthatscholarshipisacollectiveenterprise,butthatdoesnot make it any less true for this book. I have benefited from a vast supporting cast of other researchers, librarians, colleagues, students, friends, and family over the years of working on it. Researchforthisprojectbeganinearnestduringasabbaticalinthefallof 2011 from the University of Kansas (KU), coupled with a generous grant from the Spencer Foundation, which permitted me to continue working into the fol lowing spring and summer months. Aaron Tyler Rife was an intrepid assistant and companion, traveling daily to area libraries and archives, and assisting with interviews and statistical data collection. His work was integral to the project’s success, and he extended it with his own dissertation focusing on the Hickman Mills School District. AaronandIreceivedvitalassistancefromlibrariansandarchiviststhroughout the course of our work. This was especially true of the staff of the Missouri Val ley Collections at the Kansas City Public Library and the Kansas City Research Center of the State Historical Society of Missouri, located on the campus of the University of Missouri at Kansas City (formerly known as the Western Histori cal Collection). We spent months examining materials in these extensive local history collections. Reference librarians at the University of Kansas also pro vided assistance, especially regarding government (census) documents and the T. R. Smith Map Collection; staff members at the university’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library also helped with a number of particular searches. Weconductedagooddealofresearchinotherlocationsaswell.Librariansat the Johnson County Library System’s Central Resource Library were quite help ful, as were archivists at the Johnson County Museum. The same was true of librarians at the Kansas Historical Museum in Topeka. The Raytown Historical Society’s volunteer staff helped to identify pertinent material in its collections, as did volunteers at the Clay County Historical Society and Museum in Liberty, Missouri. The records department at the Kansas State Department of Educa tion located pertinent school reports and other documents, as did a number of very helpful staff members in the administrative offices of the North Kansas City School District. Librarians at Park University helped locate elusive Missouri School Reports, and librarians at Shawnee Mission North High School aided us in finding materials pertinent to its history.

ix