Book description
As media reports declare crisis after crisis in public education,
Americans find themselves hotly debating educational inequalities that
seem to violate their nation's ideals. Why does success in school
track so closely with race and socioeconomic status? How to end these
apparent achievement gaps? In the Crossfire brings historical
perspective to these debates by tracing the life and work of Marcus
Foster, an African American educator who struggled to reform urban
schools in the 1960s and early 1970s.
As a teacher, principal, and superintendent-first in his native
Philadelphia and eventually in Oakland, California-Foster made success
stories of urban schools and children whom others had dismissed as
hopeless, only to be assassinated in 1973 by the previously unknown
Symbionese Liberation Army in a bizarre protest against an allegedly
racist school system. Foster's story encapsulates larger social
changes in the decades after World War II: the great black migration
from South to North, the civil rights movement, the decline of
American cities, and the ever-increasing emphasis on education as a
ticket to success. Well before the accountability agenda of the No
Child Left Behind Act or the rise of charter schools, Americans came
into sharp conflict over urban educational failure, with some blaming
the schools and others pointing to conditions in homes and
neighborhoods. By focusing on an educator who worked in the trenches
and had a reputation for bridging divisions, In the Crossfire
sheds new light on the continuing ideological debates over race,
poverty, and achievement.
Foster charted a course between the extremes of demanding too
little and expecting too much of schools as agents of opportunity in
America. He called for accountability not only from educators but also
from families, taxpayers, and political and economic institutions. His
effort to mobilize multiple constituencies was a key to his
success-and a lesson for educators and policymakers who would take aim
at achievement gaps without addressing the full range of school and
nonschool factors that create them.
"In this timely and important book, John Spencer situates the
tragically shortened life of the brilliant African American educator
Marcus Foster in multiple contexts: the history of urban education,
urban politics, and debates around strategies of school reform. Foster
was one of the most dynamic and influential urban educators of the
1960s and early 1970s, and his career coincided with momentous
developments in civil rights, the urban violence that rocked American
cities, and economic crisis. Given the current prominence of school
reform as an issue of national importance, In the Crossfire
should have a wide and varied readership."-Michael Katz,
University of Pennsylvania
John P. Spencer is Associate Professor of Education at Ursinus
College.
