The Roots of Educational Inequality

The Roots of Educational Inequality chronicles the transformation of one American high school over the twentieth century to explore the larger political, economic, and social factors that have contributed to the escalation of educational inequality in modern America.

In 1914, when Germantown High School officially opened, Martin G. Brumbaugh, the superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, told residents that they had one of the finest high schools in the nation. Located in a suburban neighborhood in Philadelphia's northwest corner, the school provided Germantown youth with a first-rate education and the necessary credentials to secure a prosperous future. In 2013, almost a century later, William Hite, the city's superintendent, announced that Germantown High was one of thirty-seven schools slated for closure due to low academic achievement. How is it that the school, like many others serving low-income students of color, transformed in this way?

Erika M. Kitzmiller links the saga of a single high school to the history of its local community, its city, and the nation. Through a fresh, longitudinal examination that combines deep archival research and spatial analysis, Kitzmiller challenges conventional declension narratives that suggest American high schools have moved steadily from pillars of success to institutions of failure. Instead, this work demonstrates that educational inequality has been embedded in our nation's urban high schools since their founding. The book argues that urban schools were never funded adequately. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, urban school districts lacked the tax revenues to operate their schools. Rather than raising taxes, these school districts relied on private philanthropy from families and communities to subsidize a lack of government aid. Over time, this philanthropy disappeared, leaving urban schools with inadequate funds and exacerbating educational inequality.

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Reviews — The Roots of Educational Inequality

  • "In her groundbreaking study, Kitzmiller brilliantly utilizes both ethnographic and quantitative methods to expose ‘how these institutions were founded to provide different opportunities and resources to Black and white children.’ Readable and thought-provoking, this volume is of interest not only to educational specialists but to everyone who cares about equality in public education."

    —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

  • "The Roots of Educational Inequality is a compelling account of how public policy, segregation, and racial attitudes have intersected historically to produce profoundly unequal educational outcomes for American children...Historians, social scientists, educators, and activists interested in understanding and remedying the structural inequalities that persist across the nation’s urban schools will find in this book a useful resource that will inform research and progressive practice for years to come."

    —Journal of Urban Affairs

  • "This book is excellent. It is especially essential reading for those who ask the question of public schools and their reforms, 'How is that racist?' While many who ask that question seek to disprove the possibility of racism, for those who can be convinced with data, this book provides multiple types of evidence to support racism, classism, and governmental neglect of the very schools that should typify American democracy."

    —Teachers College Record

  • "Kitzmiller approaches the life and death of Germantown High School like a forensic anthropologist, combining archival research with ethnography, oral history, financial analysis, and spatial analysis to take into account multiple factors that affected the school’s changing circumstances...[A] sophisticated analysis and one that [Kitzmiller] hopes will help Americans sketch out a new path for urban educational reform."

    —The Journal of African American History

Coming Soon from Harvard Education Press:

Unchartered: Reimagining the American High School

This book shows readers, educators, policymakers, and researchers what public schools could be if, instead of dismantling these institutions, educators and researchers worked together to build on public school strengths and implement small but meaningful reforms to improve them. It is based on first-of-its-kind research to practice partnership that brought educators, researchers, and youth together to design and pilot structural reforms and instructional practices to increase the number of first-generation, low-income youth of color who are better prepared to apply, enroll, and complete four-year college degree programs. Perhaps more importantly, the reforms cultivated a school culture and community where educators and youth feel seen, heard, and valued. In addition to providing an inside look at this unique partnership structure, the book is deliberately written to provide practitioners, policymakers, and researchers with practices, policies, and solutions they can use and leverage in their schools and communities to strengthen the high school-to-college pipeline and improve youth opportunities and experiences inside their public high schools. Even though Clayton High School is a special-admit school, the book illustrates how the practices and policies that emerged from this study can be instructive for all high schools seeking to improve the post-secondary opportunities for their students. Overall, the book demonstrates how researchers and school practitioners can work together to achieve high school transformation that significantly improves post-secondary opportunities and experiences for their students.