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Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform

Potyondy, Patrick Ryan
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338335183

Abstract Details

2012, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, History.
Local civil rights organizations of Columbus, Ohio, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Columbus Urban League, and the Teenage Action Group, served as the engine for urban educational reform in the mid 1960s. Activists challenged the Columbus School District to create equality of educational opportunity for its black residents. But civil rights groups ran up against a socially conservative city and school district that had little interest in dismantling the unequal neighborhood school system. Racial tensions ran high as African Americans faced persistent discrimination in employment, access to public accommodations, housing, and schooling. Frustrated by an intransigent district, which spurned even moderate reforms proposed by the NAACP and continued with its unequal school construction policy, the Columbus Urban League presented a radically democratic proposal in 1967. The document reimagined the image of the city by simultaneously challenging both racial and class-based barriers, primarily through the concept of the educational park—large K-12 campuses consisting of centralized resources and thousands of students. The school board snubbed this new civil rights initiative as they had with all previous proposals and instead commissioned a report by the Ohio State University in 1968. The OSU Advisory Commission on Problems Facing the Columbus Public Schools presented incremental, targeted reforms to specific issues only and thus perpetuated the district’s traditional resistance to reform. In essence, by drawing on legitimized social science professionals, the district manufactured support to maintain the city’s historical unequal school system. In the end, although Columbus was a relatively economically stable city and did not experience the deindustrialization of its rustbelt brethren, meaningful school reform proved impossible despite the best efforts of several civil rights organizations.
Steven Conn, PhD (Advisor)
Daniel Amsterdam, PhD (Committee Member)
Kevin Boyle, PhD (Committee Member)
64 p.
African Americans; American History; Black History; Education History; Education Policy; Land Use Planning; Public Policy; School Finance; Urban Planning
Civil Rights; Columbus; Ohio; School; Education; City; Urban History; History of Education; Urban Reform; School Reform; Deindustrialization; Urban Planning

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Potyondy, P. R. (2012). Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338335183

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Potyondy, Patrick. Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform. 2012. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338335183.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Potyondy, Patrick. "Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338335183

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1338335183
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© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.