Black Power/White Power in Public Education

According to master-politician Thomas Tip O'Neill, all politics is local. Edwards and Willie demonstrate the efficacy of local community action, but also show how linkage with state, regional, and national agencies helps groups in their efforts to shape educational policy and practice.

Edwards and Willie examine the notion of critical mass and its relationship to community decision making. They also analyze the assets and liabilities of coalition politics. They show that specific population groups dominant in one season, and for selected circumstances, may become subdominant at another time. Such change and flexibility, they assert, is beneficial for the total community, because no one group is able to maintain control indefinitely. Their analysis will be of considerable interest to scholars, policymakers, and administrators dealing with public education issues, as well as to parents and concerned citizens.

RALPH EDWARDS is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Innovation in Urban Education at Northeastern University. Edwards was an elementary school principal in Harlem for 10 years and Assistant Professor of Education at Boston College prior to his current research activities.

CHARLES V. WILLIE is Professor of Education and Urban Studies, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University. Willie has served as a community planner, university administrator as well as a court-appointed Master in the Boston School Desegregation case. Among his earlier publications are School Desegregation Plans That Work (Greenwood, 1984) and Effective Education (Greenwood, 1988).