Shows how the end of busing and the advent of school choice sparked widespread resegregation, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods and outer-ring suburbs. Describes the effects of resegregation on West Charlotte, which was left with a high-poverty population of often-transient students as well as high levels of teacher turnover. Explores the fraying social fabric and the rise of the drug trade in the neighborhoods around the school, and the efforts of teachers, families and students to overcome the resulting challenges. Describes the way West Charlotte students contended with the increasingly harsh judgments directed at inner-city schools, in part because of a new emphasis on school rankings based on standardized tests, and in part because a resurgence of negative racial stereotypes focused on inner-city African Americans. Covers the Leandro lawsuit, in which a federal judge termed the education at Charlotte's high-poverty high schools "academic genocide."
SCHOOL RANKINGS: THE US EXPERIENCE AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR UKRAINE
