ABSTRACT
In ‘Race and the Liberal Perspective in Chicago School Reform’, Hess argues that the liberal strategies of the 1960s-centralization of responsibility and bureaucratization of service delivery-failed to produce a quality education for Chicago’s students. Instead of advancing equality of opportunity, these strategies were used by professionals at the central office and school level to promote a variety of interests other than serving children. By the late 1980s, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had lost its agency. Despite a decade of efforts with desegregation, the system had failed to improve the education of minority youth. Low achievement levels, high dropout rates and racial isolation were pervasive. Entitlement funds were misused, and a bloated central office and bureaucratized teachers’ union squelched initiative and resulted in a system where innovative principals had to be ‘creatively insubordinant’. Parents’ voices had been silenced and reform-minded teachers were equally disenfranchised.
