A Quiet Revolution: Putting Parental Choice to Work for Social Justice

ABSTRACT

AI offer first-hand account of a key stage in the development of parental choice in American public schooling, when Massachusetts state officials, concerned not to repeat the trauma and disruption resulting from mandatory reassignment of students to achieve desegregation in Boston, persuaded and helped more than a dozen other cities to adopt plans based upon guided parental choice. By 1993 over 200,000 students (25% of the state’s public school enrollment) were attending schools in communities relying on parental choice to address the isolation of minority students; most of these had abandoned residence-based assignments altogether. This account describes the means by which this was achieved. This essay does not discuss charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credits, faith-based schools or educational savings accounts; those came in the future. It is reasonable to believe, however, that the widespread and successful adoption of parental choice of local public schools in Massachusetts helped to prepare the way for such further developments nationwide.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual education
• parental choice
• school desegregation
• state government action

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This invited essay easily survived peer review from three experts. The author does not know their identities, but the editor appreciated their assistance.

2. “Considerations for Assessing Student Assignment Plans,” Quincy, MA: Bureau of Equal Educational Opportunity, August 1982.

3. All references are from the author’s personal files, and some local newspapers have shut down. References are thus accurate, but sometimes incomplete. Apologies!

4. The Fall River Story: Achieving Educational Equity and System-wide School Improvement Through “Schools of Choice”, Fall River Public Schools, Spring 1991.

5. 1978–1979 Elementary and Secondary Civil Rights Survey, Washington, DC, 1979.

6. Student Assignment Plan 1984–1987, An amendment to the Lawrence Plan approved by the Lawrence School Committee on March 10, 1980. For a detailed account, see Bagley, William, “Community Participation and Desegregation: Lawrence, Massachusetts,” Equity and Choice, I, 1, Fall 1974, 53–57.

7. Comprehensive Equity Plan, Approved by the Lawrence School Committee, May 26, 1988, 15.

8. Ibid., 103.