A Troubled Dream

by Bankston, Carl L.; Caldas, Stephen J.

• ISBN13: 9780826513892
• ISBN10: 0826513891
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Summary

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the United States still has a long way to go to attain true integration of our educational system. Using extensive interviews and a wealth of statistical information, Bankston and Caldas examine the failed desegregation efforts in Louisiana as a case study to show how desegregation has followed the same unsuccessful pattern across the United States. Strong supporters of the dream of integration, Bankston and Caldas show that the practical difficulty with desegregation is that academic environments are created by all the students in a school from the backgrounds that all the students bring with them.† Unfortunately, the disadvantages that minority children have to overcome affect schools more than schools can help remedy these disadvantages.

Author Biography

Carl L. Bankston III is associate professor of sociology at Tulane University and co-author of the prize-winning Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States Stephen J. Caldas has been a public school teacher and worked as the psychometrician for the Louisiana Department of Education. Currently he is a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Table of Contents

Figures	ix
Tables	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction The Problem of Writing about Race	1	(20)
Louisiana's Schools Prior to Desegregation: The Roots of a Racially Divided Society	21	(16)
The Struggle to Desegregate the Schools: Overcoming Injustice through the Schools	37	(17)
New Orleans: The Beginning and the End of a Process	54	(29)
East Baton Rouge: School Desegregation and Unintended Consequences	83	(23)
School Desegregation and White Flight in Lafayette Parish	106	(34)
Louisiana and the Dilemma of Desegregation	140	(46)
The Academic Consequences of Desegregation and Resegregation: Revisiting the Harm and Benefit Thesis	186	(19)
Recommendations	205	(18)
Appendix A: Single-Parent Families and Educational Environment	223	(8)
Appendix B: Multilevel Statistical Examination of the Harm and Benefit Thesis	231	(16)
Notes	247	(16)
Index	263