The Metropolitan Community

“Taines delivers a complex and hopeful answer to her question, 'How do we get advantaged people—white and wealthier people—to contribute to inequality’s un-making?' She demonstrates that the answer, although riddled with misrecognitions—begins by enabling privileged young people to 'see' educational inequality and their stake in it—not to blame or burden them—but to invite them into activism alongside peers who find themselves disadvantaged by the inequality from which they benefit. This story of a city-suburban partnership, that is designed to do just that, makes evident how we can inspire and draw upon the power and agency of youth to help write a more just future.”

Carla O’Connor, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Marsal Family School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

“Americans sometimes claim to believe in equality, but you wouldn’t know it by how they fund public education. In a deeply-researched study of metropolitan Chicago that compares a poorly-resourced city school with a wealthy one in the suburbs, Cynthia Taines uses her enormous skills as a sociologist to illuminate the systemic inequalities that plague the nation’s schools. Taines does more than that. In sparkling prose, she tells a remarkable story about how a coalition of students from these two schools, with the support of dedicated teachers and community activists, lobbied legislators for more equitable public school funding in Illinois.”

William J. Reese, Vilas Research Professor, Educational Policy Studies and History, University of Wisconsin, Madison

“At a time when education, equity, and democracy are under attack, Cynthia Taines provides us with a powerful story of young people working together across lines of race and class to create a more just public school system. The students in the Metropolitan Community Project study, discuss, and forge common cause to upend educational inequality–and this process uplifts them all.”

John Rogers, Professor of Education and Associate Dean for Research and Public Scholarship, University of California, Los Angeles

Part I - An Introduction to Educational Inequality

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - School Resources Lost & Found

Part II - Talking About Educational Inequality

Part II Introduction

Chapter 3 - Communicating the Educational Divide: Wyndham

Chapter 4 - Communicating the Educational Divide: Taylor

Part II Coda

Part III - Educational Activism

Chapter 5 - The Students and the Legislators

Part III Coda

Part IV - Metro Student Outcomes

Part IV Introduction

Chapter 6 - Personal Change: The Taylor students

Chapter 7 - Personal Change: The Wyndham students

Part IV Coda

Part V - The Metropolitan Community

Chapter 8 - Conclusion with Next Steps

Acknowledgments

Metro Directory

About the Author

Index

Cynthia Taines

Cynthia Taines is a sociologist of education who is fascinated by students’ perspectives about school and their actions for educational equality. She has published in highly regarded academic journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, The Journal of Educational Change, Education and Urban Society, Teachers College Record, and The Urban Review. With teachers and organizers, Cynthia co-founded the Metropolitan Community Project, a city/suburban partnership for educational justice. She is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at Northern Illinois University and holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies, with minors in Sociology and History, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cynthia resides in Chicago.