Educational Priorities Among Urban Black Populations

National and local educational decision makers are continually confronted with the task of defining policy intitiatives based upon the current priorities of their various identifiable constituencies. The purpose of the research reported here was to generate information about current educational priorities among urban black populations. The issue of educational priorities has received much attention during the past several years. Rising costs and conflicting views over the purposes of education, coupled with what appears to be a national crisis in confidence in the quality of schools, have contributed to an intensification of the discussion of priorities. Proposals at the national level for new initiatives range over a broad spectrum from suggestions for publicly supported education from the cradle to the grave to the tuition-credit plan which some critics have said would be tantamount to the dismantlement of the American public school system as we know it. The confused climate that surrounds the future of public education has produced a growing need to have accurate information on current public educational priorities. This need for information, of course, relates to all segments of the public. However, the need is particularly acute among those constituencies such as urban blacks who are too often left out of the policy process. The fact that there is inadequate information about educational priorities among urban blacks is especially ironic since it is this population that contributes a major segment and, in many instances, a majority of the students to be found in urban public school systems across the nation

Geography · Education Systems and Policy · School Choice and Performance