The influence of federal, state, and local policies on school desegregation in the Austin, Texas Independent School District
Creators: name: Knisely, Colette Rose
Publisher: name: The University of Texas at Austin
Year: 1978
Subjects: School integration
Texas
Austin
History
Government policy
Austin Independent School District
Education and state
School desegregation
AISD
Austin school board
Educational policy-making

description: Only recently have some school boards realized that policy implementation and policy-making are often combined. Never has this been so clearly articulated as in the federal decisions imposing educational and social remedies on segregated school systems. The mere existence of the history of court precedents, legislative programs, and administrative guidelines, regulations and enforcement mechanisms suggests that federally imposed remedies, supposedly based on some previous "policies" are often newly defined policies themselves. The school board has actually been free to participate in desegregation policy-making since 1954. Exemplified by freedom of choice plans, state legislative amendments to maintain segregated schools, and other stalling techniques, these attempts to fight federal policies with local impediments were usually designed by board members to push away the harder school desegregation decisions until, perhaps, another board was elected. But over the years, the reluctance to participate in positive planning for desegregation has left many school boards out of the vitally important implementation process altogether. This is unfortunate because the loss, of course, becomes a part of the historical pattern of losses for children, teachers, and the communities as a whole. By direct opposition or by indirect withdrawal of support from particular program, staffing or administrative policies, a school board can leave the desegregation process at the level of legal requirements. By active support of particular policies which supplement the legal minimum, the school board may change the court-ordered desegregation effort into an educationally and socially acceptable integregation effort. In the Austin, Texas Independent School District (AISD), the school board has failed to respond to issues in a way which reached beyond the simplistic level of pro- or anti-desegregation positions to the level of more complex decisions which might give character or shape to an acceptable desegregation plan. This paper outlines the dynamics of federal, state and local governments in pursuit of desegregation policies. At each level, an analysis of major trends or specific issues follows the chronology of court, legislative and administrative activities. Then the three levels are combined to emphasize the integration of government events and to show the influence of one level on another. A final chapter discusses the conclusions drawn from the above analysis in terms of the immediate future of school desegregation in Austin, Texas. If the basic premise, that the understanding of history enhances one's ability to understand the present and predict the future, is correct, then the test will be to suggest some possible inferences to be drawn from the histories