School Reform in a Vacuum: Demographic Change, Social Policy, and the Future of Children

Abstract

In their search for magic bullets to fix failing schools, policymakers seldom directly address powerful ecological factors impacting schooling. This article identifies several major demographic, societal, economic, and educational changes and trends in U.S. society over the past several years; analyzes their impact on schoolchildren; and offers a series of policy recommendations for public sector reform initiatives that show promise in ameliorating these conditions, which in turn would improve the educational prospects for all children, particularly those most at risk.

Notes

Long-term unemployment is defined as being jobless for 27 or more weeks (Joint Economic Committee, 2010).

The traditional metric used to determine whether someone is poor is lack of money. However, a growing number of researchers, led by James Foster and Sabina Alkire, have begun to consider “access to health care, reliable transportation, adequate sanitation,” and other indices (such as affordable child care) in determining the poverty level (Bartlett, 2010, p. 1). The current method of calculating poverty in the United States, which does not consider many of the variables just listed, underestimates the actual number of Americans living in poverty.

The Wake County (NC) school system, which is the 17th largest school district in the nation and surrounds the state capital of Raleigh, is in the process of ending its decade-long policy of student reassignment by socioeconomic class and returning to a system of neighborhood schools. This controversial reversal has garnered national attention and follows that of the Charlotte-Mecklenberg (NC) school system, which effectively resegregated more than a decade ago.

Mini case studies of several community-based initiatives are presented in Barnes et al. (2006).

President Obama has allocated “one-year planning grants of up to $500,000 each to 21 neighborhoods to build Promise Neighborhoods, which, like the HCZ, would provide health and other services to kids” as well as $200 million in the FY 2011 budget “to support implementation of Promise Neighborhood projects.” However, noted Strauss (2010b), “the amount of money is miniscule compared to the money Obama is spending to push charter schools, standardized tests and common standards” (p. 2).

For a lucid discussion of the problems in the child support system and ways to improve it, see Ellwood (1988), specifically pages 155 to 174.