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.
Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,7500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.
Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orpartsthereof, 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 CataloginginPublication 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—KansasCityMetropolitanArea—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
ListofIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviations
Introduction:EducatingtheFragmentedMetropolis1. Suburban and Urban Schools: Two Sides of a National Metropolitan Coin2. Uniting and Dividing a Heartland Metropolis: Growth and Inequity in Postwar Kansas City3.rTefsnaamronoitfrlGomceraTh:FlabrnanaUof School System4.isMheTe:agntvadAdezilaicaRubbrnaosruiuS School Districts5. Conflict in Suburbia: Localism, Race, and Education in Johnson County, Kansas
Figures1.1–1.4 Patterns of metropolitan divergence on selected dimensions, 1940–19802.1odds of school success, 1980 Statistical
Maps2.1 Kansas City, Missouri, annexations, 1947–19632.2 Metropolitan Kansas City school district boundaries, 19542.3–2.6of metropolitan Kansas City’s African American Growth population, 1950–19802.7Kansas City school district Metropolitan boundaries, 19802.8distribution of adults with college Geospatial degrees, 19803.1–3.3 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, 19804.2years of annexations in North Kansas City, Fifty 1913–19635.1 Communities and schools upon formation of the Shawnee Mission District, 1971E.1 Metropolitan Kansas City African American population, 2013–2017
vii
33
71
47
49
52
60
66
83
113
121
145
164
viiiILLUSTRATIONS
E.2Kansas City, children living below the Metropolitan poverty level, 2013–2017E.3 Metropolitan Kansas City, location of collegeeducated adults, 2013–2017
Tables2.1 Postwar population growth in metropolitan Kansas City’s four core counties2.2 Descriptive statistics, 1960: five geospatial areas2.3statistics, 1980: five geospatial areas Descriptive 3.1enrollment by race, 1955–1980 KCMPS 3.2from select KCMPS schools, 1962–1973 Transfers 3.3 Results of Missouri Basic Skills testing, 1978, in KCMPS and neighboring districts4.1metropolitan Missouri districts: growth and resources, KC 1954–55 to 1974–754.2metropolitan school districts: economic, social, KC and demographic profiles, 19705.1 Social status indicators, select Johnson County communities, 1960E.1ACT scores and families in poverty Composite for Kansas and Missouri districts in Greater Kansas City, 2012 and 2013A.1adult education levels, 1960 Regression analysis, A.2 Regression analysis, adult education levels, 1980A.3junior year status or Binary logistic regression: higher, 17yearolds, 1980
166
167
59
65
65
84
85
99
108
109
138
170
186
187
191
Acknowledgments
Itisanoldchestnutthatscholarshipisacollectiveenterprise,butthatdoesnotmake 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. Researchforthisprojectbeganinearnestduringasabbaticalinthefallof2011 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. AaronandIreceivedvitalassistancefromlibrariansandarchiviststhroughoutthe 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.Librariansatthe 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.