Author: Lauren Sartain
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74
Book Description
Students' risk of suspension is more strongly determined by which school they attend than by their backgrounds-including their race, gender or income. A subset of Chicago schools-about a quarter of high schools and 10 percent of schools with middle grades-have very high suspension rates, and almost all of these schools predominantly serve African American students. These schools' students come from the poorest neighborhoods with the lowest incoming achievement; many have been victims of abuse or neglect. At high-suspending high schools, about half of students received a suspension in the 2013-14 school year. This report examines reasons for racial and gender disparities in suspension rates and finds that suspensions are concentrated among schools serving the most vulnerable student populations. It also explores the degree to which differences in schools' suspension rates are related to school climate and student achievement.
Suspending Chicago's Students
Author: Lauren Sartain
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74
Book Description
Students' risk of suspension is more strongly determined by which school they attend than by their backgrounds-including their race, gender or income. A subset of Chicago schools-about a quarter of high schools and 10 percent of schools with middle grades-have very high suspension rates, and almost all of these schools predominantly serve African American students. These schools' students come from the poorest neighborhoods with the lowest incoming achievement; many have been victims of abuse or neglect. At high-suspending high schools, about half of students received a suspension in the 2013-14 school year. This report examines reasons for racial and gender disparities in suspension rates and finds that suspensions are concentrated among schools serving the most vulnerable student populations. It also explores the degree to which differences in schools' suspension rates are related to school climate and student achievement.
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74
Book Description
Students' risk of suspension is more strongly determined by which school they attend than by their backgrounds-including their race, gender or income. A subset of Chicago schools-about a quarter of high schools and 10 percent of schools with middle grades-have very high suspension rates, and almost all of these schools predominantly serve African American students. These schools' students come from the poorest neighborhoods with the lowest incoming achievement; many have been victims of abuse or neglect. At high-suspending high schools, about half of students received a suspension in the 2013-14 school year. This report examines reasons for racial and gender disparities in suspension rates and finds that suspensions are concentrated among schools serving the most vulnerable student populations. It also explores the degree to which differences in schools' suspension rates are related to school climate and student achievement.
Discipline Practices in Chicago Schools
Author: W. David Stevens
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956310
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52
Book Description
W. DAVID STEVENS is Director for Research Engagement at UChicago CCSR. He received his PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. LAUREN SARTAIN is a research analyst at UChicago CCSR. She has a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a MPP from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she is currently a doctoral student. ELAINE ALLENSWORTH is the Executive Director of UChicago CCSR. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students' educational attainment, including high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. RACHEL LEVENSTEIN is the Senior Manager for Survey Research at UChicago CCSR, where she oversees the annual census of roughly 225,000 Chicago Public Schools students, teachers, and principals. She directs all aspects of the survey process, including content design and pretesting, data collection, documentation, item analysis, and tests for response bias. She is also involved in reporting and dissemination of the results to the nearly 700 schools in CPS. Her research specialties include nonresponse and measurement error issues in survey data collection. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990, UChicago CCSR conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago CCSR studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago CCSR encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago CCSR helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956310
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52
Book Description
W. DAVID STEVENS is Director for Research Engagement at UChicago CCSR. He received his PhD in sociology from Northwestern University. LAUREN SARTAIN is a research analyst at UChicago CCSR. She has a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a MPP from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she is currently a doctoral student. ELAINE ALLENSWORTH is the Executive Director of UChicago CCSR. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students' educational attainment, including high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. RACHEL LEVENSTEIN is the Senior Manager for Survey Research at UChicago CCSR, where she oversees the annual census of roughly 225,000 Chicago Public Schools students, teachers, and principals. She directs all aspects of the survey process, including content design and pretesting, data collection, documentation, item analysis, and tests for response bias. She is also involved in reporting and dissemination of the results to the nearly 700 schools in CPS. Her research specialties include nonresponse and measurement error issues in survey data collection. The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) builds the capacity for school reform by conducting research that identifies what matters for student success and school improvement. Created in 1990, UChicago CCSR conducts research of high technical quality that can inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools. UChicago CCSR studies also have informed broader national movements in public education. UChicago CCSR encourages the use of research in policy action and improvement of practice but does not argue for particular policies or programs. Rather, UChicago CCSR helps to build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters for student success and school improvement, creating critical indicators to chart progress, and conducting theory-driven evaluation to identify how programs and policies are working.
Spare the Rod
Author: Campbell F. Scribner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678570X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
"In Spare the Rod, historian Campbell F. Scribner and philosopher Bryan R. Warnick think deeply about punishment and discipline practices in American schooling. To delve into this controversial subject, the authors carefully consider two major issues. The first involves questions of meaning. How have concepts of discipline and punishment in schools changed overtime? What purposes are they supposed to serve? And what can they tell us about our assumptions about education? The second issue involves the justification of punishment and discipline in schools. Are public school educators ever justified in punishing or disciplining students? Are these things important for moral education? Or, are they fundamentally opposed to education? If some form of punishment is justified in schools, what ethical guidelines should direct its administration? The authors argue that as schools have grown increasingly bureaucratic over the past century, formalizing disciplinary systems and shifting from physical punishments to forms of spatial or structural punishment (such as suspension), school discipline has not only come to resemble the operation of prisons or policing but has grown increasingly integrated with those institutions. These changes, they argue, disregard the unique status of schools as spaces of moral growth and community oversight, and are incompatible with the developmental ethos of education. What we need is a view of discipline and punishment that fits with the sort of moral community that schools should be"--
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678570X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
"In Spare the Rod, historian Campbell F. Scribner and philosopher Bryan R. Warnick think deeply about punishment and discipline practices in American schooling. To delve into this controversial subject, the authors carefully consider two major issues. The first involves questions of meaning. How have concepts of discipline and punishment in schools changed overtime? What purposes are they supposed to serve? And what can they tell us about our assumptions about education? The second issue involves the justification of punishment and discipline in schools. Are public school educators ever justified in punishing or disciplining students? Are these things important for moral education? Or, are they fundamentally opposed to education? If some form of punishment is justified in schools, what ethical guidelines should direct its administration? The authors argue that as schools have grown increasingly bureaucratic over the past century, formalizing disciplinary systems and shifting from physical punishments to forms of spatial or structural punishment (such as suspension), school discipline has not only come to resemble the operation of prisons or policing but has grown increasingly integrated with those institutions. These changes, they argue, disregard the unique status of schools as spaces of moral growth and community oversight, and are incompatible with the developmental ethos of education. What we need is a view of discipline and punishment that fits with the sort of moral community that schools should be"--
Closing the School Discipline Gap
Author: Daniel J. Losen
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807773492
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational opportunity and outcomes. Part I explores how suspensions flow along the lines of race, gender, and disability status. Part II examines potential remedies that show great promise, including a district-wide approach in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at social and emotional learning strategies. Closing the School Discipline Gap is a call for action that focuses on an area in which public schools can and should make powerful improvements, in a relatively short period of time. Contributors include Robert Balfanz, Jamilia Blake, Dewey Cornell, Jeremy D. Finn, Thalia González, Anne Gregory, Daniel J. Losen, David M. Osher, Russell J. Skiba, Ivory A. Toldson “Closing the School Discipline Gap can make an enormous difference in reducing disciplinary exclusions across the country. This book not only exposes unsound practices and their disparate impact on the historically disadvantaged, but provides educators, policymakers, and community advocates with an array of remedies that are proven effective or hold great promise. Educators, communities, and students alike can benefit from the promising interventions and well-grounded recommendations.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “For over four decades school discipline policies and practices in too many places have pushed children out of school, especially children of color. Closing the School Discipline Gap shows that adults have the power—and responsibility—to change school climates to better meet the needs of children. This volume is a call to action for policymakers, educators, parents, and students.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807773492
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational opportunity and outcomes. Part I explores how suspensions flow along the lines of race, gender, and disability status. Part II examines potential remedies that show great promise, including a district-wide approach in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at social and emotional learning strategies. Closing the School Discipline Gap is a call for action that focuses on an area in which public schools can and should make powerful improvements, in a relatively short period of time. Contributors include Robert Balfanz, Jamilia Blake, Dewey Cornell, Jeremy D. Finn, Thalia González, Anne Gregory, Daniel J. Losen, David M. Osher, Russell J. Skiba, Ivory A. Toldson “Closing the School Discipline Gap can make an enormous difference in reducing disciplinary exclusions across the country. This book not only exposes unsound practices and their disparate impact on the historically disadvantaged, but provides educators, policymakers, and community advocates with an array of remedies that are proven effective or hold great promise. Educators, communities, and students alike can benefit from the promising interventions and well-grounded recommendations.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “For over four decades school discipline policies and practices in too many places have pushed children out of school, especially children of color. Closing the School Discipline Gap shows that adults have the power—and responsibility—to change school climates to better meet the needs of children. This volume is a call to action for policymakers, educators, parents, and students.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund
Department and Discipline
Author: Andrew Abbott
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622273X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
In this detailed history of the Chicago School of Sociology, Andrew Abbott investigates central topics in the emergence of modern scholarship, paying special attention to "schools of science" and how such schools reproduce themselves over time. What are the preconditions from which schools arise? Do they exist as rigid rules or as flexible structures? How do they emerge from the day-to-day activities of academic life such as editing journals and writing papers? Abbott analyzes the shifts in social scientific inquiry and discloses the intellectual rivalry and faculty politics that characterized different stages of the Chicago School. Along the way, he traces the rich history of the discipline's main journal, the American Journal of Sociology. Embedded in this analysis of the school and its practices is a broader theoretical argument, which Abbott uses to redefine social objects as a sequence of interconnected events rather than as fixed entities. Abbott's theories grow directly out of the Chicago School's insistence that social life be located in time and place, a tradition that has been at the heart of the school since its founding one hundred years ago.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622273X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
In this detailed history of the Chicago School of Sociology, Andrew Abbott investigates central topics in the emergence of modern scholarship, paying special attention to "schools of science" and how such schools reproduce themselves over time. What are the preconditions from which schools arise? Do they exist as rigid rules or as flexible structures? How do they emerge from the day-to-day activities of academic life such as editing journals and writing papers? Abbott analyzes the shifts in social scientific inquiry and discloses the intellectual rivalry and faculty politics that characterized different stages of the Chicago School. Along the way, he traces the rich history of the discipline's main journal, the American Journal of Sociology. Embedded in this analysis of the school and its practices is a broader theoretical argument, which Abbott uses to redefine social objects as a sequence of interconnected events rather than as fixed entities. Abbott's theories grow directly out of the Chicago School's insistence that social life be located in time and place, a tradition that has been at the heart of the school since its founding one hundred years ago.
Student and Teacher Safety in Chicago Public Schools
Author: Matthew P. Steinberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984507641
Category : School violence
Languages : en
Pages : 72
Book Description
In schools across the country, students routinely encounter a range of safety issues--from overt acts of violence and bullying to subtle intimidation and disrespect. Though extreme incidents such as school shootings tend to attract the most attention, day-to-day incidents such as gossip, hallway fights, and yelling matches between teachers and students contribute to students' overall sense of safety and shape the learning climate in the school. Not surprisingly, schools serving students from high-crime, high-poverty areas find it particularly challenging to create safe, supportive learning environments. Chicago Public Schools (cps), the subject of this report, is no exception. In many cps schools, teachers, and students report feeling unsafe in hallways, classrooms, and the area just outside the school building. Yet, in many other Chicago schools--even some schools serving large populations of students from high-poverty, high-crime areas--students and teachers do feel safe. What distinguishes these schools? Two years ago, cps leadership suggested an innovative method of addressing safety concerns in schools--creating and implementing a "culture of calm" initiative predicated on developing positive and engaging relationships between adults and children. Though not an evaluation of culture of calm, this report provides initial evidence about the potential promise of such a strategy. The report examines the internal and external conditions that matter for students' and teachers' feelings of safety. It shows how the external conditions around the school, and in students' backgrounds and home communities, strongly define the level of safety in schools. It then examines the extent to which factors under the control of schools--their social and organizational structure, and particularly the relationships among adults and students--mediate those external influences. Appendices include: (1) Student and Teacher Survey Responses; (2) Survey Measures Used in This Report; (3) Methodological Details on Statistical Models; and (4) Models of Safety by Neighborhood and School Context. (Contains 13 tables, 17 figures and 55 endnotes.).
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984507641
Category : School violence
Languages : en
Pages : 72
Book Description
In schools across the country, students routinely encounter a range of safety issues--from overt acts of violence and bullying to subtle intimidation and disrespect. Though extreme incidents such as school shootings tend to attract the most attention, day-to-day incidents such as gossip, hallway fights, and yelling matches between teachers and students contribute to students' overall sense of safety and shape the learning climate in the school. Not surprisingly, schools serving students from high-crime, high-poverty areas find it particularly challenging to create safe, supportive learning environments. Chicago Public Schools (cps), the subject of this report, is no exception. In many cps schools, teachers, and students report feeling unsafe in hallways, classrooms, and the area just outside the school building. Yet, in many other Chicago schools--even some schools serving large populations of students from high-poverty, high-crime areas--students and teachers do feel safe. What distinguishes these schools? Two years ago, cps leadership suggested an innovative method of addressing safety concerns in schools--creating and implementing a "culture of calm" initiative predicated on developing positive and engaging relationships between adults and children. Though not an evaluation of culture of calm, this report provides initial evidence about the potential promise of such a strategy. The report examines the internal and external conditions that matter for students' and teachers' feelings of safety. It shows how the external conditions around the school, and in students' backgrounds and home communities, strongly define the level of safety in schools. It then examines the extent to which factors under the control of schools--their social and organizational structure, and particularly the relationships among adults and students--mediate those external influences. Appendices include: (1) Student and Teacher Survey Responses; (2) Survey Measures Used in This Report; (3) Methodological Details on Statistical Models; and (4) Models of Safety by Neighborhood and School Context. (Contains 13 tables, 17 figures and 55 endnotes.).
Suspending Chicago's Students
Author: Lauren Sartain
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74
Book Description
Students' risk of suspension is more strongly determined by which school they attend than by their backgrounds-including their race, gender or income. A subset of Chicago schools-about a quarter of high schools and 10 percent of schools with middle grades-have very high suspension rates, and almost all of these schools predominantly serve African American students. These schools' students come from the poorest neighborhoods with the lowest incoming achievement; many have been victims of abuse or neglect. At high-suspending high schools, about half of students received a suspension in the 2013-14 school year. This report examines reasons for racial and gender disparities in suspension rates and finds that suspensions are concentrated among schools serving the most vulnerable student populations. It also explores the degree to which differences in schools' suspension rates are related to school climate and student achievement.
Publisher: Consortium on Chicago School Research
ISBN: 9780990956358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74
Book Description
Students' risk of suspension is more strongly determined by which school they attend than by their backgrounds-including their race, gender or income. A subset of Chicago schools-about a quarter of high schools and 10 percent of schools with middle grades-have very high suspension rates, and almost all of these schools predominantly serve African American students. These schools' students come from the poorest neighborhoods with the lowest incoming achievement; many have been victims of abuse or neglect. At high-suspending high schools, about half of students received a suspension in the 2013-14 school year. This report examines reasons for racial and gender disparities in suspension rates and finds that suspensions are concentrated among schools serving the most vulnerable student populations. It also explores the degree to which differences in schools' suspension rates are related to school climate and student achievement.
The Grammar of School Discipline
Author: Hannah Carson Baggett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793601763
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
The Grammar of School Discipline examines how seemingly discrete school discipline policies and practices constitute a particular grammar: Removal, Resistance and Reform. Weaving numeric data with portraits of students and school practitioners, the authors detail a nuanced landscape of school discipline in Alabama and its anti-Black foundations. The removal of Black students can be traced to the antebellum construction of Blackness as criminal, deviant, and deserving of punishment. A focus on resistance centers the agency that students and practitioners exercise despite anti-Black removal. An exploration of specific reform efforts emphasizes that even the most well-intentioned and well-organized reforms are limited when the removal of students remains an option for practitioners. The authors end with an appeal to educational stakeholders to repair the harms that these anti-Black policies and practices inflict on students and communities, and thus move towards repairing the damage that white supremacy inflicts on everyone’s humanity.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793601763
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
The Grammar of School Discipline examines how seemingly discrete school discipline policies and practices constitute a particular grammar: Removal, Resistance and Reform. Weaving numeric data with portraits of students and school practitioners, the authors detail a nuanced landscape of school discipline in Alabama and its anti-Black foundations. The removal of Black students can be traced to the antebellum construction of Blackness as criminal, deviant, and deserving of punishment. A focus on resistance centers the agency that students and practitioners exercise despite anti-Black removal. An exploration of specific reform efforts emphasizes that even the most well-intentioned and well-organized reforms are limited when the removal of students remains an option for practitioners. The authors end with an appeal to educational stakeholders to repair the harms that these anti-Black policies and practices inflict on students and communities, and thus move towards repairing the damage that white supremacy inflicts on everyone’s humanity.
Discipline Disparities Among Students With Disabilities
Author: Pamela A. Fenning
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807780766
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
The decades-long problem of disproportionate school discipline and school-based arrests of students with disabilities, particularly those who also identify as Black or Native American, is explored in this authoritative book. A team of interdisciplinary scholars, attorneys, and education practitioners focus on how disparities based on disability intersect with race and ethnicity, why such disparities occur, and the impacts these disparities have over time. A DisCrit and research-based perspective frames key issues at the beginning of the book, and the chapters that follow suggest promising practices and approaches to reduce the inequitable use of school discipline and increase the use of evidence-supported alternatives to prevent and respond to behaviors of students with disabilities. The final chapter recommends future research, policy, legal, and practice goals, suggesting an agenda for moving the field forward in years to come. Contributors: Amy Briesch, Sandra Chafouleas, Donald Chee, Lindsay Fallon, Pamela Fenning, Amy Fisher, Benjamin Fisher, Emma Healy, Heather Hoechst, Miranda Johnson, Kathleen Lynne Lane, Patrice Leverett, Laura Marques, Thomas Mayes, Markeda Newell, Angelina Nortey, Wendy Oakes, Kristen Pearson, Michelle Rappaport, Monica Stevens, Carly Tindall-Biggins, Margarida Veiga, Elizabeth Marcell Williams, Perry Zirkel
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807780766
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
The decades-long problem of disproportionate school discipline and school-based arrests of students with disabilities, particularly those who also identify as Black or Native American, is explored in this authoritative book. A team of interdisciplinary scholars, attorneys, and education practitioners focus on how disparities based on disability intersect with race and ethnicity, why such disparities occur, and the impacts these disparities have over time. A DisCrit and research-based perspective frames key issues at the beginning of the book, and the chapters that follow suggest promising practices and approaches to reduce the inequitable use of school discipline and increase the use of evidence-supported alternatives to prevent and respond to behaviors of students with disabilities. The final chapter recommends future research, policy, legal, and practice goals, suggesting an agenda for moving the field forward in years to come. Contributors: Amy Briesch, Sandra Chafouleas, Donald Chee, Lindsay Fallon, Pamela Fenning, Amy Fisher, Benjamin Fisher, Emma Healy, Heather Hoechst, Miranda Johnson, Kathleen Lynne Lane, Patrice Leverett, Laura Marques, Thomas Mayes, Markeda Newell, Angelina Nortey, Wendy Oakes, Kristen Pearson, Michelle Rappaport, Monica Stevens, Carly Tindall-Biggins, Margarida Veiga, Elizabeth Marcell Williams, Perry Zirkel
Ghosts in the Schoolyard
Author: Eve L. Ewing
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652616X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652616X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
“Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.