Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness of Common Ground

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 order to argue that four of the five leaders made flawed decisions that plunged Boston into violence. Lukas\u27s docudramatic method of reporting works to cloak the ignorance, fear, and hostility of the minority of citizens in the white enclaves of Boston who initiated racial violence in the robe of civic innocence

Key Issues Facing the Boston Public Schools

This article is the third examination of the six issues the author identified in Some Key Issues Facing Boston\u27s Public Schools in 1984, following the November 1983 election of the first thirteen-member Boston School Committee. He revisited these issues in a 1988 report and now assesses how the policy leadership of the system fared in dealing with these challenges during the past decade. He discusses other issues at the close of this article. Writing from a sociological point of view, Dentler is primarily concerned with the question of how well the public school districts and their school staff are able to provide optimal learning opportunities to all students. He assumes that this can best be appraised in terms of district structure, history, and educational policy

Boston School Desegregation: The Fallowness of Common Ground

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 order to argue that four of the five leaders made flawed decisions that plunged Boston into violence. Lukas\u27s docudramatic method of reporting works to cloak the ignorance, fear, and hostility of the minority of citizens in the white enclaves of Boston who initiated racial violence in the robe of civic innocence