Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons^™

Centropoly: The Structure Of Educational Failures In The U.S., Martha Bradley-Dorsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How did a country birthed in individual liberty and voluntary associations create just the opposite in its inflexible, layered, government-controlled public education system? Here, using public choice theory, I explain how near-sighted and unrelated reforms, often based in private motives, gave us what I call the public education centropoly – a hybrid government organization consisting of a set of monopolies layered beneath two additional government levels that especially fails disadvantaged students.

After defending the use of public choice theory (Chapter 1) and summarizing the U.S. public education system formation (Chapter 2), in Chapter 3 I examine the Elementary and Secondary …

"People Who Look Like Me": Community, Space And Power In A Segregated East Tennessee School, Nicholas Scott Mariner

Doctoral Dissertations

This Cultural Studies dissertation comes from extended research on three East Tennessee school districts as they attempted to integrate after the Supreme Court mandated an end to segregation in the United States. The study focuses on the experiences of former students of Austin High School, the segregated black school on the eastern edge of Knoxville, Tennessee. From looking at their schooling experiences in the context of the area's failed attempts to integrate, I address the myriad ways these participants and white citizens took up the term community to advance or block integration efforts. Community, I argue from this research, is …