This research answers the question, "How did pre-Brown African American school leaders lead their schools?" After conducting a metasynthesis on the leadership practices of pre-Brown African American school leaders, I constructed the Pre-Brown African American School Leadership Paradigm (PAASLP) and model. The PAASLP describes a paradigm…

Derrick Bell's interest convergence thesis is a seminal framework to analyze social change within critical race theory. While interest convergence's influence has grown, two foundational questions have been raised: do interest groups act rationally; does interest convergence also offer a change prescription or only an explanation of prior events.…

The federal government's role in PreK-12 education has long been contentious and continues to evolve. Many have written about education governance, but few have attempted to define an appropriate role for the federal government. That is the core purpose of this essay. The authors articulate a set of principles to guide the federal role in…

The purpose of this study is to expand the definition of adequacy by adding soft skills as a measure of school productivity. The singular focus on academic standards inherent in education policy has prevented scholars from seeing the concept of adequacy through myriad perspectives and has contributed to a resegregation of schools. Education policy…

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the case of "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka," which struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of the 1896 "Plessy v. Ferguson" decision. The Court claimed, "To separate them [African American children] from others of similar age…

This commentary was designed to accompany a series of articles in "Educational Researcher," vol. 35, no. 1, a theme issue entitled "Moving Beyond "Gratz" and "Grutter"--The Next Generation of Research." The author discusses the role of education research in civil rights litigation, drawing on historical…

The goals of this chapter are threefold. The first goal is to examine the scientific attainment of African Americans in the post-"Brown" era. The term scientific attainment is used here to describe more broadly mathematics and scientific achievement as measured in trend studies, academic coursework, and degrees. A second, related goal is…

This book is a comprehensive history of American education from 1945 to 1980--its social and political context, the influences that shaped educational policy, and the effects of those policies on schools and colleges. Chapter 1, "Postwar Initiatives," describes the state of education immediately following World War II, and the steps…