Unification and Its Discontents

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
The State ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

Perrinites (Cephalopoda, Ammonoidea) in the Lower Permian of California: Paleontological Notes

1986 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1133-1133
Author(s):  
Edward C. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
First Record ◽  
The State ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Lower Permian ◽  
Invertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
Shasta County

A specimen of the ammonoid Perrinites Böse, 1919, was collected from the McCloud Limestone east of the summit of Tombstone Mountain, Shasta County, California. This is the first record of the genus in California, an important addition to the meager Permian cephalopod fauna of the state previously reported by Miller, Furnish, and Clark (1957) and Wilson (1984). It was found 1,100 feet (335 m) above the base of the formation in a coarse-grained limestone (Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Invertebrate Paleontology Section locality 6184) within fusulinid zone H of Skinner and Wilde (1965), considered to be late early or early middle Leonardian in age.

The Other America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Beider ◽  
Kusminder Chahal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The Right

Widely stereotyped as anti-immigrant, against civil-rights, or supporters of Trump and the right, can the white working class of the United States really be reduced to a singular group with similar views? This book begins with an overview of how the term “white working class” became weaponized and used as a vessel to describe people who were seen to be “deplorable.” The national narrative appears to credit (or blame) white working-class mobilization across the country for the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US elections. Those who take this position see the white working class as being problematic in different ways: grounded in norms and behaviors that seem out of step with mainstream society; at odds with the reality of increased ethnic diversity across the country and especially in cities; blaming others for their economic plight; and disengaged from politics. Challenging populist views about the white working class in the United States, the book showcases what they really think about the defining issues in today's America—from race, identity, and change to the crucial on-the-ground debates occurring at the time of the 2016 U.S. election. As the 2020 presidential elections draw near, this is an invaluable insight into the complex views on 2016 election candidates, race, identity and cross-racial connections.

Teach for America Placement and Teacher Vacancies: Evidence from the Mississippi Delta

2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Chris Curran
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Mississippi Delta ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
The State ◽  
Teach For America ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Teacher Labor

Background/Context Teach for America (TFA) represents an influential yet controversial preparation route for new teachers. In recent years, TFA has received criticism from traditionally trained teachers and schools of education on the basis that they are crowding out or taking positions away from non-TFA teachers. Despite this criticism, research on TFA has tended to focus on its impact on student outcomes rather than on its implications for teacher labor markets. Research Questions This study explores the relationship between TFA placement in school districts in the Mississippi Delta and district advertised vacancies to provide the first evidence on the impact of TFA on teacher labor market outcomes. The questions addressed include the following: What is the relationship between TFA presence in a Mississippi school district and the number of district vacancies advertised through the state board of education? Do these relationships vary by characteristics of the vacancy such as grade level or subject area? Setting This study uses data on school districts in the state of Mississippi for an 11-year period from 2001 through 2011. Research Design This study utilizes two primary analytic strategies. The first encompasses school district and year fixed effects with a series of time-varying control variables to identify the impact of TFA placement off changes in the use of TFA by districts over time. The second approach capitalizes on an abrupt increase in the presence of TFA in Mississippi starting in 2009 by using a difference-in-differences design. A series of robustness and sensitivity checks are also included. Findings/Results The results indicate that the presence of TFA in a district predicts approximately 11 fewer advertised vacancies per year per district and that each additional TFA teacher placed in a district predicts approximately one less advertised vacancy. Conclusions/Recommendations The results indicate that in the Mississippi Delta, TFA appears to be filling teacher vacancies. This suggests that the continued use of TFA by districts may be a viable solution to addressing teacher shortages.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 370-382
Author(s):  
Michael Goldfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
United States Today ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
1960S And 1970S

The conclusion looks at the implications of the failure to organize southern workers for the United States today and asks how successful southern organizing might have led to different outcomes. Foremost is the possibility that the civil rights movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s would have been much more powerful if more white working-class support had been enlisted. This possibility, which the book asserts was real, had the potential to make the contemporary social and political landscape of the United States vastly different.

Descriptive Profile and Survey of Alternatively Certified Texas Music Educators

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher K. Dye
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
The State ◽  
Alternatively Certified ◽  
Music Teaching ◽  
Economically Disadvantaged Students ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Prior Experiences

The purpose of the study was to examine the features of Texas’s Alternative Route to Certification (ARC) programs in music education, the demographics and prior experiences of program completers, and the employment of ARC completers in K–12 public schools. Data were collected from the State Board of Educator Certification about demographics and employment information for all individuals who completed ARC programs in music education between 2002 and 2012 ( N = 1,200), and individuals from that population were surveyed concerning their experiences ( n = 214). Survey respondents completed programs that varied widely in duration, features, instructional modalities, and providing institutions. Music educator gender and ethnicity were significantly associated with the route used to pursue alternative certification. Relative to the distribution of music teaching positions across the state, ARC completers were disproportionately employed in large urban districts, charter school districts, and in districts with large proportions of economically disadvantaged students.

Evaluating Changes to Sodium Content in School Meals at a Large, Urban School District in Los Angeles County, California

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. S43-S49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Cummings ◽  
Lindsey Burbage ◽  
Michelle Wood ◽  
Rebecca K. Butler ◽  
Tony Kuo
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Urban School ◽  
Sodium Content ◽  
Urban School District ◽  
School Meals

Piper v. Big Pine School District of Inyo County: Indigenous Schooling and Resistance in the Early Twentieth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Blalock-Moore
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
The State ◽  
Day School ◽  
Indian Children ◽  
Indian School ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
American Children ◽  
Indigenous Schooling

Prior to the 1920s, the state of California authorized local school districts to educate Native American children in ““separate but equal”” facilities where there was no federal Indian school in the vicinity. In 1923 seven Indian children in Inyo County attempted to enroll in a public school instead of attending the poorer quality local Indian day school. The state Supreme Court, in Piper v. Big Pine School District (1924), ruled in their favor. The case was central to ending segregation in California’’s public schools.

Open Enrolment and Student Sorting in Public Schools: Evidence from Los Angeles County

10.1068/a4128 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1109-1128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Ledwith
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
White Students ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Latino Students ◽  
Student Mobility ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Student Sorting ◽  
The Relationship

I examine the relationship between student mobility associated with open enrolment and student sorting in public schools in Los Angeles County and find that open enrolment provides Latino students who attend outside their neighbourhoods access to higher quality, more integrated, schools than those who remain enroled in their neighbourhood schools. However, attendance at majority-white schools continues to be highly segregated. Therefore, while open enrolment may provide some minority students with the opportunity to avoid attending a majority-minority school, it does not undo the mechanisms through which white students remain socially and spatially segregated from their minority counterparts. The lack of meaningful interracial and cross-cultural exchange during the school-age years is a worrying trend that could lead to increased polarization and social exclusion in Los Angeles and other multiethnic cities and communities.

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