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Full-Text Articles in Race and Ethnicity
Getting Power Back: Court Restoration Of Executive Authority In Boston City Government (1985), Marcy Murninghan
Getting Power Back: Court Restoration Of Executive Authority In Boston City Government (1985), Marcy Murninghan
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article, originally published in 1985, is based partly on the author’s experience with the Boston school desegregation case, but goes beyond it. It chronicles some of the events that occurred when a state and a federal court attempted to disengage from active jurisdiction over two Boston public systems: the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Housing Authority. It makes three proposals, which, if enacted, would help to keep the courts out of day-to-day management of municipal operations. It also makes some generalizations about the court-agency interplay that are relevant to the post-remedial phase of institutional reform litigation. The author …
Behind The Numbers: Conditions Of Schooling In Boston (1981), Marcy Murninghan
Behind The Numbers: Conditions Of Schooling In Boston (1981), Marcy Murninghan
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article includes portions of a report on the structure, governance, operations, and effectiveness of the Boston School Committee that was commissioned by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau in 1980. The passages provide an overview of the mandate, background, and recommendations, examining how a set of prominent professionals and citizens viewed the problem facing school department governance, including its isolation and the longstanding credibility gap fueled by patronage politics. It also looks at continued tensions between “equality” and “quality,” which occupied the heart of court-ordered desegregation; rising demands on a system that lacked the capacity to serve a broad array …
Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness Of Common Ground, Robert A. Dentler
Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness Of Common Ground, Robert A. Dentler
New England Journal of Public Policy
This essay scrutinizes the book by J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, to assess whether it presents a valid and reliable account of the issues, people, and events it chronicles. The substantive core of the book is shown to be the politics of Boston public school desegregation. The parts played by the three families in this event are dramatically portrayed but cannot be corroborated and are not interpreted. The parts played by five major policy leaders, when tested against other evidence, are found to be distorted, questionable legends woven in …