The Dismantling of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1980-2014 by Leanne Kang A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Educational Studies) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor Jeffrey E. Mirel, Co-Chair Associate Professor Robert B. Bain, Co-Chair Professor Vincent L. Hutchings Associate Professor Vilma M. Mesa Assistant Professor Angeline Spain © Leanne Kang 2015 DEDICATION To my former students. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was possible due in large part to my adviser, Jeffrey Mirel and his seminal study of the Detroit Public Schools (1907-81). Inspired by The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System—which I title my dissertation after—I decided early in my graduate work to investigate what happened to Detroit’s school system after 1980. Thanks to Jeff’s mentorship, I quickly found a research topic that was deeply meaningful and interesting to the very end. He and his wife, Barbara Mirel, are also patrons of my husband’s music. Jeff was the adviser every graduate student hopes to have. The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without Bob Bain courageously jumping into the middle of a project. I was so fortunate; Bob is one of the smartest people I have ever met. He modeled a way of thinking that I will take with me for the rest of my career. His feedback on every draft was incredibly insightful—sometimes groundbreaking— helping me see where to go next in the jungle of data and theory. And always, Bob believed in me and this project. For this reason alone, I am incredibly grateful to him. To my committee members, I offer my sincerest appreciation. Vilma Mesa, Vincent Hutchings, and Angeline Spain were tremendously encouraging and insightful in their feedback. They were truly an interdisciplinary team that helped me articulate the value of historical methods in educational policy research. A special and heartfelt thanks to Vilma who gave me exceptional advice during some of the toughest moments of my doctoral experience. I also want to acknowledge Henry Meares and Edward St. John, two other faculty members that engaged with my ideas for this study and provided opportunities for me to work iii with leaders in Detroit. I thank Marquise Williams and Ahmed El Batran, both students at the School of Education, who assisted with research. Our lively debates contributed to the final outcome of this dissertation. I appreciate David Labaree’s astute comments on an early draft of this work presented at the American Education Research Association conference in 2013. I also thank Clarence Stone, whom I met at the Urban Affairs Association conference in 2014, for his encouragement to apply urban regime analysis in my study. I would be completely remiss if I did not acknowledge the institutional support that I received for this project. I thank the Rackham Graduate School, the School of Education, and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy for providing me several research grants. I thank the State of Michigan for granting me the King-Chavez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowship that supported my final year in the doctoral program. Mary Schleppegrell, the Chair of Educational Studies, and Carla O’Connor, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, have also supported this study in its final stretch. The School of Education staff—Joan McCoy, Byron Coleman, Tina Sanford, Alfreda Fleming, and Melinda Richardson—were amazing. I thank all of my good friends that I made at the University of Michigan: Carrie-Anne Sherwood, Annick Rougee, Kelly Slay (my research partner), Diana Sherman, and Betsy Salzman. The GradCru Women’s Bible Study was an incredible support, especially Mandy Benedict-Chambers who co-led the group with me. My best friends from home, Haein Back and Loris Caulfield, supported me from afar. I thank my godparents, Gail and John DeHeus, proud U-M alums, who cheered me on every step of the way. Without my parents, Chung-Li and James Kang, I would be nothing. I thank them for their influence on me. Without my sister, Angelica Kang, I would be alone in my thoughts. We can be twins when it comes to understanding and naming the world. I thank her for our kinship. iv Finally, I thank my husband, Terry Kimura. A month after I moved from New Jersey to Ann Arbor, Michigan, I saw from afar a handsome man on stage playing the trombone. Little did I know this talented jazz musician would play a key role during my doctoral studies. Terry was a constant source of love, support, and calm. He commented on multiple drafts even when my writing was just mere sketches. Even though he was busy with his music, he would make time to cook delicious meals for me whenever I was consumed by a deadline. My husband is an amazing person. Whatever good might come from this study, Terry had a major part in it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x ABSTRACT xi CHAPTER I - Introduction 1 CHAPTER II - School Governance Change in the United States, 1840 to the Present 12 The Village School System, 1780-1890 14 The Administrative Progressives’ One Best System, 1890-1940 17 Dissatisfaction with the One Best System, 1960s & 1970s 19 Consensus and Conflict: Examples from Chicago, Newark, and New York City 25 Changing Conceptions of Public Schooling in the Twentieth Century 30 Emerging Patterns of School Governance, 1980-2013 34 Mayoral Control and Integrated Governance 39 “The End of Exceptionalism” 42 Conclusion 45 CHAPTER III - Studying School Governance Change in Detroit, 1980 to 2014 48 Early Stages of Research: Grounded Theory and Newspapers as Data 49 vi Methods and Sources for a Historical Study 52 Urban Regime Analysis and School Reform 57 Civic Capacity and Race as a Barrier 59 Applying Urban Regime Analysis to Historical Case Study 60 Plausibility, Case Study, and Contemporary History 62 CHAPTER IV - Five School Reforms: Changing School Governance, 1994-present 65 Proposal A: The State Takes Over Finance 66 Mayoral Takeover: Attempt to Govern Schools with a Mayoral-Appointed Board, 1999-2005 71 Emergency Management: State Intervention, 2009-present 75 Michigan’s Charter Movement: Creating an Alternate System, 1994-2014 82 The Education Achievement Authority: Another Schooling System, 2012-present 91 Conclusion 95 CHAPTER V - Mayoral Takeover: The Beginning of the End, 1994-2005 98 An Urban School System in Crisis 99 How Mayoral Takeover Took Shape in Detroit 106 The Fight Over School Governance 108 Implementing the Takeover of Detroit’s Schools’ Governance System 115 The Effects of Mayoral Takeover: Collapsing Enrollment, 2000-2005 118 Campaign for the Return of the Elected School Board 122 Analysis: Why Mayoral Takeover Was Eliminated 125 Conclusion 129 CHAPTER VI - The Education Achievement Authority: The End of Exceptionalism 134 The Ongoing and Persistent Crises of Detroit’s Public Schools 138 vii The EAA Dream: “A Different System, for a Better Outcome” 140 Establishing the Education Achievement Authority 144 Resistance to the EAA: Conflict and Struggle 148 Discussion 156 Conclusion: The Final Assault? 159 CHAPTER VII - Conclusion: Characterizing a New Era of Urban Public Schooling 161 “The End of Exceptionalism” in American Education 163 Structural Crisis 168 Search for New Order: Neoliberal Reform? 171 School Battles: Beyond Race? 173 Lessons for Educational Research and Policy 178 Bibliography 185 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Patterns of School Governance in the United States 44 Table 2. Selected Newspapers 50 Table 3. Number and Percent of Detroit Schools by Types, 1999 and 2011 90 Table 4. Who Supported and Opposed Mayoral Takeover 113 Table 5. Constituencies that Supported and Opposed Proposal E in 2004 124 Table 6. Detroit Public Schools Transferred to the Education Achievement Authority in 2012 147 Table 7. Traditional Governance Regime versus New Style Governance Regime 158 Table 8. Traditional Governance Regimes Versus Emerging Reform Regimes 166 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Five Mayor School Reforms, 1994-2014 66 Figure 2. DPS Enrollments 1994 through 2013 82 Figure 3. Percent of school-going children in Detroit enrolled in schools available to the district. 89 Figure 4. Twelve School Systems: Detroit's Fragmented Educational Landscape 92 x ABSTRACT In the last thirty years we have seen a flurry of school reforms (e.g., charters, school choice, vouchers, NCLB, Race to the Top, mayoral control, emergency management, statewide recovery school districts, etc.). However, most researchers have studied such reforms in isolation from the other rather than as symptoms of broader change, especially in the way that we govern schools. A historical analysis, this study seeks to understand school governance change by examining the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) since 1980, a single urban school district in which most of the school reforms mentioned above have been implemented. I situate the study within the overall history of public schooling in the United States and use urban regime analysis to highlight how politics—especially informal political arrangements—influences and sustains governance change. Analyses reveal that there are five key school reforms that have culminated in the dismantling of Detroit’s traditional school governance system and the emergence of a possible third wave of school governance change in U.S. history. Case studies of mayoral takeover (1999-2004) and the Education Achievement Authority (2012-present) tell the story of how policies gradually eroded local control and weakened the traditional governance regime, enabling the rise of new educational actors to support governance change. I argue Detroit is a case study of Jeffrey Henig’s idea of “the end of exceptionalism,” the notion that public schooling is losing its special status as a closed system of government and being reabsorbed into general-purpose government.