Baker and Foote EAQ42 - 1

Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2006) 90-123

10.1177/0013161X05278187
Educational
Baker, FooteAdministration
/ URBAN SCHOOLQuarterly
INTERRELATIONSHIPS ARTICLE
Changing Spaces:
Urban School Interrelationships and the
Impact of Standards-Based Reform
Michael Baker
Martha Foote
Background: This article is an historical sociospatial analysis of change during the past
three decades within and between three high schools in a deindustrialized city in the
northeastern United States. Sociospatial relations are the everyday spatial practices,
perceptions, and representations that constitute social worlds. Interrelated with the con-
tinued economic decline and spatial segregation in many U.S. cities, state standards-
based reform policies are reinforcing and furthering a more hierarchical, homogeneous,
and fragmented educational space, increasing the marginalization of some urban
schools, teachers, and students.
Purpose: This historical sociospatial analysis of urban secondary schools will describe
the conjunction of demographic and policy changes contributing to patterns of uneven
development that raise questions about the consequences and sustainability of the cur-
rent state and federal standards-based reform initiatives.
Keywords: space; urbanization; standards-based reform; secondary schools;

sustainability; educational change
This article describes the political economy of space during the past 35
years within and between three secondary schools in a midsized city in the
“rust belt” region of the United States. It also provides a case study of the
changing politics of space in urban education during the closing decades of
the 20th century—a period characterized by state restructuring for global
competitiveness, increasing interconnectedness, and the consequent reorga-
nization of sociospatial relations. To a significant degree, spatiality and tem-
porality constitute human experience and the social worlds that humans
inhabit. The article is an historical and sociospatial analysis of three urban
secondary schools that display patterns of uneven yet interrelated develop-
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X05278187
© 2006 The University Council for Educational Administration
90
Baker, Foote / URBAN SCHOOL INTERRELATIONSHIPS 91
ment over time. These patterns raise questions about the historico-spatial
contexts, consequences, and sustainability of current state and federal initia-
tives known as standards-based reform.
Sustainability is not simply a matter of how changes or improvements can
be maintained within individual schools over time. It also includes how
changes within individual schools affect others around them (Hargreaves &
Fink, 2004). The sustainability of any one school’s mission over time can
only be understood in relation to the surrounding spaces in which it exists.
School change and the sustainability of school change efforts are therefore
matters of social geography as well as social history (Hargreaves, 2003). A
social geographies perspective considers “how particular initiatives can be
developed within individual schools without compromising the development
of the surrounding schools, now and in the future” (Hargreaves & Fink, 2000,
p. 32). The issue of sustainability, in other words, raises questions about the
interrelationships among schools as they are affected by and pursue change
over time, especially in the current era of competitive choice policies (Wells,
1993).
The three decades that span this study represent a period when space in
education and society has been reorganized in profoundly new ways. In
the United States, these decades are associated with increasing numbers of
students living in racially segregated zones of urban poverty and marginal-
ity (Dreier, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom, 2001; Wilson, 1997). The past two
decades have also witnessed a paradox of space where state, federal, and
international standards reform movements have defined the product of
schooling and the work of teachers more narrowly and homogeneously,
and market competition has created increased differentiation among schools
in economically and racially segregated cities. These shifting demographic
and policy landscapes in urban secondary schools are part of a wider global
transformation of sociospatial relations within the politics and economics of
capitalist development and associated changes in the state (Brenner, 2004;
Lefebvre, 2001).
This article’s analysis is developed through a grounded theory (Strauss &
Corbin, 1998) interpretation of project data as described in Hargreaves and
Goodson’s article in this issue. The first section sets out a critical geography
perspective on spatiality that frames the subsequent case analysis. Next, the
sociospatial relations within and among three high schools (comprehensive,
magnet, and alternative) are described from the late 1960s to the present,
drawing in particular on 75 teacher and administrator interviews conducted
between 1998 and 2000. Because the sociospatial changes within and among
these schools are inextricably interrelated with recent processes of urbaniza-
tion, the article also sketches the changing social and contextual geographies
92 Educational Administration Quarterly
of the city of “Bradford.” The article concludes by returning to a central ques-

tion in educational administration of sustainability of reform efforts in rela-
tion to historical patterns of uneven yet interrelated development across the
case study schools.
THEORIZING SPACE
Space is not just a physical entity, a container that things, people, and
activities occupy. Martin Heidegger contended that space, time, and being
are at the core of all human existence (Elden, 2001; Heidegger, 1962).
“Human being’s own spatiality is essential to its basic state of Being-in-the-
world” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 148). Where we are and when we are, are funda-
mentally connected to our sense of who we are. Times and places are also
interpreted and understood through our sense of ourselves, our identities.
The historical organization of space, in other words, is a constitutive element
in human experience, social relations, and social organization.
Space has a dialectical relationship to society and identity. It is both
a medium and an outcome of societies, cultures, and human interaction
(Giddens, 1984). Although space seems natural, it is profoundly social.
Space shapes us, just as we shape it. Thus, although it may be easy to under-
stand how cities are not “natural,” how the space of the city is a human, social,
political, economic, and historical product, “natural” landscapes too are a
matter of human interaction and interpretation. Thoreau’s “cathedral groves”
of redwoods derive spiritual significance from the “civilized” experiences
and traditions that humans bring to their encounters with nature (Schama,
1996). In other words, “space in itself may be primordially given, but the
organization and meaning of space is a product of social translation, trans-
formation and experience” (Soja, 1989, pp. 79-80).
Educational leadership and administration is suffused with spatial meta-
phor and significance. For example, centralization and decentralization
(Fullan, 1993), “scaling up” of reform efforts (Elmore, 1995), and distributed
leadership (Spillane & Halverson, 2001) are all spatial constructs and spa-
tially oriented forms of action. In the field and practice of educational admin-
istration, these spatial constructs of understanding are often converted into
normative strategies for coordinating, controlling, and commanding the use
of decentralization or the orchestration of large-scale reform, for example.
This article is driven instead by a necessarily prior conceptual and critical
analysis of space and spatialization in school systems and educational reform
that should precede the normative rush to administrative action.
The French social theorist Henri Lefebvre set out to create a unified theory
of the production of space where spatiality is interrelated with social exis-
tence, historical contexts, and societal formations. “Space is social morphol-
ogy: it is to lived experience what form itself is to the living organism, and
just as intimately bound up with function and structure” (Lefebvre, 1991,
p. 94). Lefebvre’s historical analysis of the production of social space shifts
attention from commonsense conceptions of space as product to spatial-
ization as a social process. According to Lefebvre (1991), “space is not a
thing but rather a set of relations between things” (p. 83), which are dialec-
tically interrelated and involved in everyday processes of production and
reproduction.
“Social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other
products: rather it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their inter-
relationships in their coexistence and simultaneity” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 73).
In addition, the organization and reorganization of space are deeply bound up
with the social, political, and economic forces of production and reproduc-
tion of capitalist societies (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 77). Space “is simultaneously a
material object or product, the medium of social relations and the reproducer
of material objects and relations” (Gottdiener, 1985, p. 129). “The spatial
arrangement of a city, a region, a nation, or a continent increases productive
forces, just as do the equipment and machines in a factory or in a business. . . .
One uses space just as one uses a machine” (Lefebvre, 1979, p. 288).
Andy Hargreaves’s (2002) analysis of social geographies of educational
change includes five principles in which
• space is a social as well as a physical phenomenon (Lefebvre, 1979);

• space is both a medium and outcome of human interaction (Giddens, 1991);
• space, time, and being define the core of human existence (Heidegger, 1962);
• space is imbued with imaginary as well as physical and social properties, like
the imaginary spaces of “little England” or Canada’s “true north strong and
free” (Lefebvre, 1991; Shields, 1990);
• distributions of space (high/low, central/peripheral) reflect and reinforce dis-
tributions of social power and status (Stallybrass & White, 1986).
Lefebvre (1991) developed an integrated definition of social space com-

prising three interrelated fields: representations of space, spatial practice,
and representational space—the conceived, the perceived, and the lived,
respectively. Social spatialization involves a dialectical interaction between
these three fields. Thus, “imaginary space” as Lefebvre describes it, shapes
and influences how people experience, organize, and reshape physical space,
which influences, in turn, how people experience and “imagine” such space.
These interactions between different kinds of spatialization are not random.
Instead, social relations within a particular society reflect the interrelated

mental conceptions, social practices, and physical perceptions of space.
How space is organized, what it means, how it is experienced, understood,
and represented, varies historically, according to the particular forms of cul-
tural, political, and economic organization (Bauman, 1998; Castells, 1996;
Giddens, 1990; Harvey, 1989; Soja, 1989). According to Lefebvre (1991)
and others (e.g., Harvey, 1989), changes in the organization of space are
interrelated with changes in the dominant modes of production. “Each mode
of production has its own particular space. The shift from one mode to
another must entail the production of a new space” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 46).
Historical changes in the modes of production and the (re)organization of
space can be seen in the “geohistory of urban-industrial capitalism” (Soja,
2000), which has been supported by the urban architectures of rationally
planned space (Soja, 1989). In modern capitalist societies, social space is
produced by political power, “by violence in the service of economic goals”
(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 152).
According to Lefebvre, the form of space that now dominates spatial prac-
tices and perceptions of space is the logico-epistemological abstract space of
“everyday life in the modern world” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 12). Throughout the
20th century, urban spaces became increasingly abstract, remote, empty,
with clear lines and uncomplicated vistas embedded in vast tracts of gray
concrete similarity, which Lefebvre characterized as “a worldwide tendency
to uniformity” (Lefebvre, 1987, p. 7). Although this increasingly abstract
space might have seemed like a thing in itself, it was a result of the external-
ization of economic and political practices of planning and organization orig-
inating in dominant groups within the capitalist systems (Gottdiener, 1985, p.
27; Lefebvre, 1991, pp. 89-90) as well as in state socialism. According to
Lefebvre, abstract representations of space as rational, “objective,” and
bureaucratic constitute both modern spatial organization and the correspond-
ing spatial practices of everyday life. The built environments (spatial organi-
zation) of late 20th-century U.S. cities, for example, characterized by inter-
linked freeways and automobile transport, high-rise buildings, concrete
sidewalks, and so forth, contribute to the constitution of everyday socio-
spatial practices represented in architectural and technological utopias,
technical-bureaucratic mentalities, and conceptions of unlimited progress,
which are all encompassed by state-sponsored priorities of economic effi-
ciency, productivity, and growth.
After World War II, as the political economies of the industrialized coun-
tries were reorganized within a new political and economic settlement, asso-
ciated with the Keynesian welfare state and the Fordist labor process of
mass production, social space became increasingly commercialized and it
developed to promote economic interaction and further the interests of the

market and the state (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 291; Shields, 1990, p. 180). National
economies, planned and regulated by the state, created large-scale produc-
tion by technologically advanced and rationalized methods that fed and were
fed by the mass consumption of an increasingly affluent working class earn-
ing rising wages. This “Golden Age” of capitalism was a period of un-
precedented growth in the industrialized nation-states, where profitability
included social security safety nets, widespread public education, and “New
Deals” that led to planned economic growth among an increasingly educated
and protected labor force (Hobsbawm, 1995). The predominant sociospatial
relations of everyday life that distinguish this postwar period of economic
development were influenced by a variety of significant changes, including
the rise of the automobile-based culture of consumerism, the global expan-
sion of the mass media, the emergence and expansion of suburban housing
developments, metropolitan political fragmentation, the decline of the inner
city, and increasing segregation and ghettoization (Soja, 2000). The commu-
nity and rich complexity of the inner city was abandoned, as suburbs, new
industrial plants, offices, and shopping malls grew up around the old urban
centers. The relations between public and private space were gradually trans-
formed as public and private space were turned into abstract space—the
space of accumulation and growth, commercialization and marketization,
calculation and planning, mass communication, and homogenization.
Although there is no one-to-one correspondence between sociospatial
change and periods of capitalist development (Gottdiener, 1989), experi-
ences, perceptions, and representations of spatiality continue to change in the
current period of social, economic, and political restructuring. Since the
early 1970s, advanced industrial societies have been undergoing an uncertain
process of political-economic restructuring as the postwar Keynesian-
Fordist development model entered a structural crisis of accumulation and
was replaced by a new model of capitalist development captured under the
term neoliberalism. For the leading industrialized countries, neoliberalism is
a state-directed project that seeks to steer governmental forms, social institu-
tions, and individual behavior in line with a particular vision of the market
and society. Overall, this transition entailed, on one hand, a retreat from
national social welfare programs, national protective labor legislation, and
national monetary policies and, on the other hand, a growing concern with
product innovation, labor market flexibility, technological expertise, and
global structural competitiveness, particularly with reference to the substate
scales of industrial districts, regions, and cities (Brenner, 1997, p. 155).
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the international and national model of capi-
talist development was reorganized in ways that furthered the intensive
(everyday life) and extensive (geographical) reach of capital, creating a new

space of positional competition among states, regions, and cities. Organized
as an intellectual-political movement responding to the international eco-
nomic crisis of the 1970s, neoliberal restructuring as state policy began in the
Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s. Neoliberal restructuring was
intimately connected to both the onset of an industrial-technological revolu-
tion and the growing power of transnational capital. The global expansion of
the capitalist system was not only a matter of geographical extension but also
of instantaneous communication. Extending capitalist economic activity fur-
ther and faster, within a leaner, downsized, more flexible system, promised to
restore the power of profitability, although financial crises, political instabil-
ity, and questions of sustainability persist. Arousing increasing resistance,
neoliberal restructuring is attempting to secure a stable regulatory regime for
the global accumulation of capital as well as construct a “global market
civilization” (Gill, 2003), in which standardized schools play a central role.
One effect of the recent political-economic reorganization of capitalist
societies is even more homogenization and standardization in the use and
experience of space—an accelerated trajectory toward a world of dehuman-
ized services and empty places and things—“the globalization of nothing”
(Ritzer, 2004). A second effect is a realignment of centers and peripheries
(Shields, 1990). Rust-belt cities cede prominence to silicon valleys as old
industries close down and information enterprises supplant them. Industrial
centers decay and inner cities collapse as manufacturing and services desert
them. White and bright flight seeks refuge in the suburbs, and those left
behind feel excluded from and alienated by the emptying social space that
once belonged to them, including its schools (Lefebvre, 1976, p. 23).
Third, many people’s lives are now interconnected in complex ways
through links, connections, networks, and circuits in processes of endless
communication through which social relations in geographically distant
places are intertwined (Castells, 1996; Nespor, 2002). Life seems excitingly
complex and interconnected for those who are “netted” and on the Web, who
have connections and the freedom and opportunity to be “tourists” who are
mobile and can travel (Bauman, 1998). The market expresses and exploits
these patterns of interconnected preference and choice. But the marginalized
and excluded who are out of the net, who have no connections and can exer-
cise little market choice are not society’s tourists but its “vagabonds.” Their
diversity is not wanted so their movements are watched, policed, regulated,
standardized, given zero tolerance, and placed under constant surveillance
(Hargreaves, 2003). If anything, neoliberal spatial reorganization seems to be
exacerbating social polarization (Castells, 1996; Lipman, 2002), creating
“new geographies of centrality and marginality” (Sassen, 1999). Contem-
porary patterns of school choice create inclusions and exclusions of precisely

this kind.
Fourth, the onslaught of modern standardization and endless abstraction
propels the elite to conquer abstract space by re-creating particular places
that feel special or exclusive. Loft living, gentrification and waterfront devel-
opment; cool coffee shops and couch-laden bookstores; and gated communi-
ties that secure safety for the privileged within—all offer exclusion, and the
promise of particularity and individuality even though this looks increasingly
like all the other particularities that other elites experience elsewhere. The
proliferation of schools of choice or magnet schools that draw certain people
to them often turns out to be like this—not so much exclusive as exclusionary
in its spatial politics.
Lefebvre (1991, 2003) anticipated these developments when he theorized
that under late stages of capitalism, space became
• more homogenous—with places being more interchangeable,

• more fractured—as space is separated into different “parcels,”
• more hierarchical—as places are arranged unequally in relation to the center of
domination
This article shows how, in three contiguous schools in one school district,
the globalization of capitalist social relations has led to uneven yet inter-
related development that is expressed through hierarchical, fragmented, and
homogenous or “standardized” space in the real and “imaginary” ways that
Lefebvre theorized. It shows how in one school district, three decades of
changing spatial perceptions and practices have shaped the context, content,
and consequences of educational administration and reform.
SCHOOLS, SPACE, AND THE CITY
Changing spatialization, interrelated with the global expansion of capital-

ism, has great significance for change over time in public (especially urban)
schools. The American urban school in many ways embodies the spatial and
economic transitions from an industrial city and welfare state in the 1970s, to
an informational city (Castells, 1989) and competitive state (Jessop, 2002) in
the 1980s and 1990s. Postwar political-economic development transformed
the sociospatial relations of the prewar American city. The federal govern-
ment’s interest and substantial investment in building roads and highways
facilitated the emergence of the American suburb in the 1950s as well as
accompanying economic decline of city centers from the 1960s and 1970s,
leaving large concentrations of poor and low-status social groups behind

(Rury & Mirel, 1997). Housing construction, real estate sales, zoning poli-
cies, and land speculation all helped to constitute a frequently racialized
means of acquiring wealth for middle- and upper-middle-class families and
were central factors in the flight to and racial segregation of the suburbs.
Magnet schools were then introduced as attempts to encourage middle-class
families to continue living in increasingly poor and minority-populated cities
with declining property values. The unequal and contrasting sociospatial
relations that exist today among urban schools and between urban and sub-
urban school districts are a consequence of these larger developments.
In the 1980s, various international, national, and state conferences, com-
missions, and reports were organized that propelled the “systemic restructur-
ing” of education to the top of the political agenda (Daun, 2002). In 1983, A
Nation at Risk defined the changed position of America within the world of
nations and observed that an increasingly competitive world economy made
consequent “demands” for “a high level of shared education.”
The world is indeed one global village. We live among determined, well-
educated, and strongly motivated competitors. . . . America’s position in the
world may once have been secure with a few exceptionally well-trained men
and women. It is no longer. . . . Learning is the indispensable investment re-
quired for success in the “information age” we are entering. (National Com-
mission on Excellence in Education, 1983, pp. 1-2)
A Nation at Risk reinforced the historical relation between education and

national economic growth. The standards-based reform initiatives of the
1980s and 1990s were state-directed attempts to realign the educational sys-
tem with the structures of the emerging globalized economy. “Schooling has
never been so tied to labor as it has in the last part of the 20th century and dur-
ing the emergence of pervasive global economy” (Ilon, 1997, p. 619).
With the advent of neoliberal restructuring policies in the 1980s, these
patterns of suburban development, urban decline, White and bright flight,
and magnet responses were overlaid with a new regime of public policies that
came with America’s entry into a more competitive, market-based, flexi-
ble, and globalized economy. The governance of the public education system
began to take the form of quasi-markets (Whitty, Power, & Halpin, 1998).
The distinction between public and private schools has begun to change, as
“failing” schools and districts, like prisons, have begun to be managed by pri-
vate enterprises. Market principles have promoted choice and mobility, the
capacity to conquer the constraints of space for personal advantage, through
the proliferation of charter schools and other measures (Wells, Carnochan,
Slayton, Allen, & Vasudeva, 1998). No Child Left Behind legislation leaves
the charter and corporate school strategies waiting in the wings for public
schools that fail to meet prescribed standards (U.S. Department of Educa-
tion, 2002). Meanwhile, outside the market, schools with parents and stu-
dents who have little economic or cultural capacity to choose are subjected to
“enforced localization” (Bauman, 1998; Hargreaves, 2003), where failure is
given zero tolerance and everyone’s performance is relentlessly measured,
managed, and monitored through the spatial and political strategy of homog-
enization and standardization.
All these developments are evident in contemporary educational change
in North America—in the evacuation of the city and the urban schools left
behind, the impact of real and “imaginary” or felt standardization and
homogenization on all schools, the magnet option and its creation of greater
exclusiveness even as it tries to promote inclusiveness, the growing fragmen-
tation and division between urban schools, and the efforts of public alterna-
tive schools to defend and protect their own distinctive and inclusive mis-
sions and spaces in the face of all these forces. We turn now to the city and
school district of Bradford to see how these social and spatial forces have
evolved over time.
URBANIZATION AND URBAN SCHOOL CRISES
During the past 40 years, Bradford has seen dramatic sociospatial changes
reflected in economic, demographic, and geographic trends. The economy of
Bradford was largely based on industrial manufacturing, with production
facilities of several large multinational corporations providing semi- and
high-skill jobs. Although two thirds of all jobs in Bradford in 2002 were still
dependent on manufacturing, during the past two decades manufacturing
jobs have declined precipitously. Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, jobs in the
Bradford region that pay more than minimum wage now require a high
school diploma. In the mid-1980s, the corporate giants in Bradford exerted
considerable influence over the direction of the standards-based reform
movement in the Bradford city schools. The academic product of the public
schools continues to be viewed as a vital component in the area’s efforts to
succeed in the emerging, hyper-competitive, global business environment.
Although there has been some regional growth in the high-tech manufactur-
ing and business services sectors, 50% of these new jobs were in the suburbs.
Demographically, Bradford was predominantly a White European immi-
grant city until the 1950s, when increasing numbers of African Americans
began arriving, attracted by prospects for employment. The African
TABLE 1
Changing Demographics (in percentages)
City of Bradford Bradford City School District

White Poverty Minority White Poverty Minority
1970 82 12 18 63 20 37
1980 68 18 32 40 23 60
1990 59 23 41 27 69 73
1999 43 26 57 18 77 82
American population of Bradford grew from slightly less than 8,000 in 1950
to more than 35,000 in 1964. In 2001, African Americans comprised 34% of
a population of 211,000 in the city. Despite a strong economy in the early
1960s, unemployment was still disproportionately high for Blacks (Botts,
1981, pp. 6-7). In 1964, Bradford was the scene of a major urban uprising,
related to deeply entrenched patterns of racial discrimination and inequality
in housing, employment, and education. Many of the conditions that precipi-
tated these race-related rebellions persist in 2004. In the 1980s, increasing
numbers of Hispanics, mainly Puerto Rican Americans, began to settle in
Bradford and now comprise 12% of the city’s population.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000), in 1970 there were 6,000
families in Bradford who fell below the poverty line, rising to 8,000 by 1980,
52,000 by 1990, and 55,000 by 2000. The city of Bradford in 2001 ranked
11th in the United States for child poverty and 6th for child poverty among
Hispanic families (Children’s Defense Fund, 2003 1).
This exponential growth in poverty from the mid-1980s coincided with
the accelerated departure of middle-class families to the surrounding sub-
urbs. White and bright flight, along with the continued decline of manufac-
turing jobs and property values, have left a core of poor families—mainly
African American and Hispanic minorities—in impoverished, segregated
neighborhoods within concentrated sections of the city.
These changes in the city and region are interrelated with other socio-
spatial changes within and among the Bradford city schools (see Table 1).
Between 1970 and 1999, the number of Whites decreased by 39% in the
city and 45% in the city schools. In 2002, the ethnic makeup of the total stu-
dent population was 63.4% Black, 19.1% Hispanic, 15.3% White, and 2.2%
other (Council of the Great City Schools1). By contrast, the ethnic makeup
among the teachers in 2002 was 77% White, 16% Black, 5% Hispanic, and
2% other. The district was negatively perceived by the public as serving
largely poor minority students in overcrowded, chaotic, frequently violent,
and underfunded classrooms. Bradford schools were segregated not only by

race but also by family income levels. Middle- and upper-income families
living in Bradford tended to choose one of the few magnet or specialty ele-
mentary schools or curriculum programs. By the middle and high school
years, many middle- and upper-income Bradford families moved out of the
city, switched to private schools, or secured a slot in one of the district magnet
schools.
The standards-based reform movement emerged at the same time that
many of these city and school district sociospatial trends were becoming evi-
dent in the 1980s. Although Bradford schools were characterized by increas-
ing numbers of minority students living in poverty, graduation requirements
both increased and narrowed. Prior to 1996, there were two state-certified
diplomas and corresponding curricular tracks: comprehensive and noncom-
prehensive. In 1996, the state instituted a plan to phase in high-stakes com-
prehensive examinations for all students in six academic subject areas: math,
science, English, foreign language, global studies, U.S. history, and govern-
ment. The plan also called for increasing the graduation requirements in math
and science from 2 to 3 years by 2001. After 7 years, the comprehensive
diploma graduation requirements now apply to all but the advanced place-
ment (AP) and international baccalaureate (IB) students. According to the
State Department of Education, the comprehensive exams “provide schools
with a basis for evaluating the quality of instruction and learning” (State Edu-
cation Department, 2001, p. 1).
The combined impact of increasing numbers of minority students living
in segregated conditions of poverty and the imposition of new graduation re-
quirements for all but the most privileged students has dramatically changed
the sociospatial relations of Bradford secondary schools. Uneven patterns of
marketization and standardization have produced a declining ability and
freedom for most students, teachers, schools, and communities, except the
most privileged, to produce their own spatiality. They have also undermined
the sustainability of school improvement efforts by detracting from their
depth (in terms of learning goals) and by producing measured improvement
for some students and schools to the detriment of others around them. After 7
years of administering this new regime of state comprehensive examinations
at various grade levels (4th, 8th, and 9th through 12th), approximately 70%
of the students entering the 9th grade did not graduate after 4 years, according
to Bradford School District data. During the past 20 years, a more central-
ized, hierarchical, and also fractured space of educational reproduction has
emerged in Bradford, anticipating the urban school marketization option
embedded within the “adequate yearly progress” accountability measures of
No Child Left Behind (U.S. Department of Education, 2002).
TABLE 2
2000-2001 School Demographics
Sheldon Barrett Durant

(Comprehensive) (Magnet) (Alternative)
Total students 1,939 1,071 200

Free and reduced lunch 789 430 120
Black 1,128 669 93
Hispanic 480 99 17
White 270 226 87
Asian 56 74 3
American Indian 5 3 0
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics (2000-2001).
These sociospatial patterns can be seen in three of the eight Bradford high
schools that are included in the Change Over Time? study: Sheldon, Durant,
and Barrett Magnet. Sheldon is a traditional comprehensive high school that,
among the three studied here, has changed the most from the combined
impact of standardization, White and bright flight, and poverty among the
minorities left behind. Barrett is a magnet school that was created to combat
White and bright flight but, in doing so, skimmed off the best students from
Sheldon and schools like it. Finally, Durant is an alternative school that has
struggled to defend a distinctive space for its students and teachers against
the onslaught of standardization. Table 2 displays the main demographic data
for each school.
STIGMATIZED SPACE:
SHELDON HIGH SCHOOL
The recent history of Sheldon is a story of sociospatial transformation

from the “most suburban” of the Bradford city secondary schools in the
1960s and 1970s to a stigmatized “urban” school in the 1980s and 1990s.
Sheldon Junior/Senior High School reopened at its present location 3 miles
from the central city in 1959. Built on a 26-acre campus, the new school
included numerous athletic fields and vocational education facilities, science
and language labs, gymnasiums, a theater, and a public radio station. As a
large comprehensive school, Sheldon offered, in addition to the common
academic core subjects, a variety of exploratory and enrichment electives in
business education, art, music, drama, home economics, and various
vocational “shop” programs. Throughout the 1960s, the new Sheldon was
known as a “shining star” in the state.
Prior to 1970, student enrollment at all schools in Bradford was organized
by a neighborhood feeder system, and a majority of the students attending
Sheldon lived within the mostly White upper-, middle-, and lower-class
neighborhoods surrounding the school. Teachers described Sheldon during
the 1960s and early 1970s, as “basically a White school”: “90% White and
10% non-White.” Most of these teachers also lived in the city and many in the
immediate neighborhoods. All teachers recalled an intimate sense of belong-
ing to Sheldon, characterized by one teacher as a sense of “connectivity”
between the school and their personal lives. At the same time, the 1960s and
early 1970s were divisive and disruptive times of intense community conflict
in Bradford, including how to desegregate the city’s schools, which mirrored
segregated settlement patterns. As more and more students were redistrib-
uted across well-established neighborhood feeder school boundaries, indi-
vidual and shared senses of belonging were threatened. By the early 1970s,
increasing numbers of White families were leaving the Bradford city school
district, partly in response to the eruption of racially related problems at vari-
ous high schools. Despite a series of violent incidents among different groups
of students at Sheldon in the early 1970s, toward the end of the decade Shel-
don was considered by various teachers to be a “fairly integrated” school,
racially and economically, and it continued to carry the reputation of being
the top academic high school in the city.
The 1970s was also a time of alternative experimentation for some teach-
ers at Sheldon. “Learning Options” electives for students in English and
social studies were created to engage students in academic learning that was
relevant to their interests.
We as a department decided that we would set up scope and sequence and that
we would try to get away from grades, from kids being 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th
grade, and instead we would try to determine what skills were needed at differ-
ent points and we would try to structure our courses so that until a person
showed competence in that area, in that skill, he or she would not move onto the
next area. . . . We were trying to enlist kids in the areas of their interest and yet
also ask them to perform to appropriate academic standards. . . . We decided on
what a student should know to get a diploma from Sheldon High School in
English.
Toward the end of the 1970s, these electives “that kids could engage them-
selves in,” such as Vietnam, science fiction, or Black figures in national his-
tory, were eliminated by a district administration that increasingly prescribed
academic content in core subject areas. These reductions in the curriculum
for noncomprehensive students continued with the instigation of district and

state academic course and exam mandates throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
In addition to the comprehensive and noncomprehensive categories of
students, honors and AP programs were introduced at Sheldon in the late
1970s. The honors courses were started at the request of several parent
groups, mostly from the wealthy Belview neighborhood, who were con-
cerned their children were in classes with increasing numbers of students
“who did not want to be there.” As one teacher recalled, “The Belview White
population had a tendency to go into the honors program and were isolated, in
many cases, from the rest of the school, which became Black, Hispanic and
Asian.”
The 1980s was a significant period of change in the student population at
Sheldon. In 1980-1981, the district initiated a second major reorganization
intended to desegregate the mostly all-Black schools on the opposite side of
the city from Sheldon, characterized by high concentrations of poverty. This
reorganization included the creation of magnet schools that began with the
establishment of Barrett Magnet Middle School in 1980. Feeder boundaries
were redrawn and a more centralized yet complex selective process of allo-
cating students was introduced based largely on racial proportions, along
with student choices and admissions policies at particular schools. The inti-
mate relationship between Sheldon and its surrounding neighborhoods
changed significantly as hundreds of students began arriving by bus from
neighborhoods across town. In 1988, a new district superintendent further
revised the district’s student enrollment policy, allowing students to rank
order their preferred schools, and then distributing them proportionately
according to prior course grades.
The emergence of Barrett Magnet in 1980 and a districtwide open enroll-
ment policy in 1988 marked the beginning of an explicitly competitive
dynamic between the secondary schools in Bradford and the advent of
school-choice policies aimed at promoting competition between schools.
With the loss of “bright” students to Barrett Magnet in 1980, along with an
influx of other students resulting from the closure of Drake High School in
1981, hundreds of mostly poor, African Americans began the daily bus ride
to Sheldon from across town. Following the introduction of a Spanish bilin-
gual program in 1986, more and more Hispanic students also began attending
Sheldon. By the end of the 1980s, Whites comprised a minority of the stu-
dents. Special education students also increased significantly, with the spe-
cial education faculty moving from being the smallest department (3 teach-
ers) to the largest (25 teachers) between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s.
By the mid-1980s, the number of students attending Sheldon who were
living below the poverty level had also risen significantly, changing the rela-
tionship between the faculty and the students. One teacher reflected that
“maybe we as middle-class people were having a harder time relating in the
classroom. . . . I think you felt less enthused about the school.” Many teachers
talked about the lack of student interest in education. Their explanations
pointed to conditions of poverty.
The major reason Bradford schools are falling apart is what is euphemistically
called “White flight.” And I’m not saying that Black people are stupid—don’t
misunderstand me. The economic issues are the primary problem. The fact that
these kids that I am teaching are so economically deprived and are so poor,
their very background diminishes their chances of ever being interested in edu-
cation at all. Most of them have no interest in school other than seeing their
friends and getting a warm meal. They do not care about school anymore.
So . . . in 32 years I have seen profound changes. From the time when the stu-
dents were incredibly interested in learning, incredibly interested in what they
were going to be doing in their future, to a point where the vast majority of stu-
dents I now teach have no interest in their future whatsoever. Most of them
don’t think they are going to live to be 20, between the drugs and the booze and
the shootings. If they don’t have a future, they have no interest in education. If
they have no interest in education, you cannot jump in their little heads and
teach them—it cannot be done.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Sheldon’s surrounding neighborhoods were

changing as well. Property values declined markedly, combined with con-
tinued White and bright flight to the suburbs, leaving neighborhoods close
to the school with greater concentrations of poverty and all its associated
problems.
Academically oriented families and students continued to move to the
suburbs or choose one of the more attractive magnet schools.
Sheldon High changed dramatically. It had been a great school in the late
1970s; it was a fabulous school and an integrated school, and with drawing
from a poor community and an affluent community, probably the picture of
what a real integrated school might be. And eventually, the poverty weighed
down on it tremendously. And then your bright flight, either to the suburbs, or
within the city, people started choosing Barrett Magnet or the Bradford Acad-
emy of Arts. They wanted another choice as the school got more and more
poor.
During the 1980s, with a declining number of loyal Belview families, and of
honors and AP courses, Sheldon lost its top academic school reputation and
its ability to attract additional middle- and upper-middle-class families seek-
ing safe, academically credible high schools for their children. “Your better
kids with the better parents are gone. They’re in the suburban schools, the
parochial schools.” For many veteran teachers, as Sheldon’s standing in the

status hierarchy declined, so did their valuation of the school and their work,
frequently captured as “urban education.”
I think there are excellent schools still left, still operating. However, the urban
education, as it is doing right now, is not doing anything of great value. And I
think that it is very sad. I used to be proud of going to work. I used to really think
that what we were doing was useful. I no longer feel that’s true, which is why I
should get the hell out—let’s be honest.
When the implementation of the comprehensive diploma graduation

requirements for all students is combined with changes in the student popula-
tion, approximately 20% of the students entering Sheldon in the ninth grade
were graduating in 4 years. “Each year since I’ve been here, we have failed
over 50% of the freshman class each year.” “We used to graduate 400-plus
per year. This year we graduated 180 some. In the near future, if they indeed
have to give comprehensive diplomas, we’ll be graduating less than 25 a
year.” Although the school and district are working extremely hard, under
considerable pressure, to change this systemic crisis of failure, all efforts
are focused on and constrained by the bottom line of improving academic
achievement as measured by state comprehensive exam scores.
The districtwide efforts to improve comprehensive exam scores provoked
overwhelmingly critical responses among Sheldon teachers. First, teachers
believed that the vast majority of students were not prepared to pass or were
not capable of passing the exams. A number of teachers described and pre-
dicted increased experiences of failure and frustration for students and teach-
ers as a result of curriculum standardization.
I understand trying to raise the bar and get everybody to work at a higher level,
but when you have more than half of your classes failing, raising the bar doesn’t
seem like it’s really helping these kids. So I think this latest reform is short-
sighted.
Second, teachers were critical of how the “new standards approach” con-
trolled the work of teachers by making test preparation the goal of good
teaching in an attempt to develop a “teacher-proof curriculum.”
They [building and district administrators] are trying to develop a teacher-

proof curriculum, and they’re trying to get the younger people when they come
into observe them. And they’re bringing people in from the central office to
check on how people are doing the new standards approach.
Many teachers reported teaching to the exam, all the time, all year long.
This year was the first we had the new English comprehensive exam, and we
spent, myself included, all year just teaching this one exam. That’s pretty much
all we did in English, which is bad. We may have kids that passed it because of
that, but in the long run, we haven’t read literature, we haven’t done other great
things because we were teaching this one exam.
Now I’m trying to prep them for the midterm. You teach to the test. I’d much
rather be trying to teach them a book or a story or something that they might en-
joy, but we’ve got to prep them for the test.
And, finally, some teachers were worried that students’ needs were not being
met. A teacher who started teaching special education at Sheldon in 1997 de-
scribed how she began to “see the kids that are falling through the cracks.”
I think over the last 3 years I’ve begun to realize that there’s a lot of, “We’ve got
to get through this curriculum,” kind of thing and not focusing so much on the
kids, but on the curriculum, on the standards that we all have to reach. And now
I see things totally differently, because I see the kids that are falling through the
cracks now. Now I’m beginning to pick up on those kids that aren’t being dealt
with because we’re too busy trying to reach a certain standard that’s been laid
down for us.
Various teachers mentioned the need for a much broader curriculum and for
alternatives to the comprehensive exam for all students. Some regretted the
reduction of the vocational and arts programs at Sheldon. One veteran Afri-
can American social studies teacher expressed how the school was no longer
teaching basic practical knowledge about the world and about students’ own
backgrounds. Sheldon’s space was becoming standardized space that ex-
cluded the experiences and achievements of those who did not measure up.
This sociospatial history of Sheldon High School illustrates the pedagogi-
cally constraining and negatively stigmatizing effects of standards-based
reform policies on a traditional comprehensive school serving increasing
concentrations of poor, minority students in a deindustrialized city that has
become a casualty of the globalized economy. The “dramatic” transforma-
tion of Sheldon from the “most suburban” of the Bradford city schools to a
troubled “urban school” contributed to a significant loss of pride and value
among many veteran teachers, in their work and their school. The interaction
of demographic changes and policy responses at Sheldon has contributed to
a fundamental transformation of the sociospatial relations within and sur-
rounding the school during the past two decades, creating a fractured, stan-
dardized, and stigmatized “imaginary” educational space. Sheldon is now
working to avoid being replaced, turned over to a private company or the

state, or reopened as a charter school, as stipulated under No Child Left
Behind (U.S. Department of Education, 2002, p. 7).
MAGNETIZED SPACE:
BARRETT MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL
In 1980 Barrett was redefined by its new magnet status. Like other Brad-
ford high schools, Barrett experienced racially related tensions and conflicts
in the late 1960s when its student population went from predominately White
to predominately Black. After Barrett was reorganized as a middle school in
1972, the school served a 95%, largely poor, African American student popu-
lation and experienced reputed problems of poor attendance, low academic
performance, and lack of discipline. The surrounding neighborhoods in the
early 1970s were approximately 70% White, but some of the proximate
neighborhoods were among the most segregated and impoverished: the
Black settlement zones of the 1960s. Because of growing concerns about
continued bright and White flight from the city’s schools and about the future
of the community, in 1978 the neighborhood association began a strong pub-
lic campaign to close or change Barrett. The school board and the superinten-
dent responded to this pressure by assigning a dynamic new principal and
promising to locate three proposed federally funded magnet programs within
the school.
Based on a 1979 congressional guarantee of continued federal funding
through 1985, the Bradford city school district initiated a 5-year plan in 1980
to implement 12 distinct magnet programs throughout the city. These school-
within-a-school curriculum programs were intended to bolster student inter-
est and contribute to achieving racial integration. As the first magnet school
in Bradford, Barrett Middle School was reorganized around three “acade-
mies”: performing arts, science and technology, and humanities. In connec-
tion with the controversial closure in the spring of 1981 of nearby Drake High
School, Barrett Magnet Middle School became Barrett Magnet High School
in the fall of 1981. Also in 1981, after the election of Ronald Reagan, federal
funds allocated for racial desegregation efforts ended until Congress created
the Magnet Schools Assistance program in 1984 (Raffel, 1998, p. 95). With
the loss of the remainder of the promised federal funds, the plan to create 12
distinct magnet programs in the Bradford city schools was put on “permanent
hold,” establishing an unequal playing field in the growing competition for
middle-class families.
Although initiated during the end of the struggles for desegregation, the
mission and identity of Barrett Magnet High School reflected and was re-
inforced by the standards reform movement of the early 1980s. During both
the Reagan and Bush Administrations, magnet schools were given the addi-
tional purpose of promoting market competition and school choice (Henig,
1994, pp. 83-84). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Barrett served as both a
pilot and a model for the reform of academic standards and teacher profes-
sionalization policies related to increasing student academic performance. In
1982, for example, the Bradford city school board voted to increase gradua-
tion requirements in math, science, and foreign language at Barrett “as a pre-
lude to the stiffening of requirements for graduation at all city high schools”
(Bunis, 1982). Throughout the 1980s, Barrett frequently served as a media
showcase for visiting national, state, and local leaders promoting the move-
ment for increased educational productivity. In 1989, U.S. President George
Bush Sr. visited the school to promote magnet school choice and school-
business partnerships. In 1998, the district superintendent asked Barrett to
launch an IB program, pronouncing that this program would raise academic
standards and performance throughout the district.
The early years of Barrett as a magnet school, until the late 1980s, were
described nostalgically by one teacher as the “Camelot days.” The newly
hired and existing faculty went through a formative bonding experience as
they collaboratively constructed the school’s curriculum, ethos, and mission.
In 1985, the school was roughly half its current size of 1,100 students. An
evident and characteristic sense of loyalty and pride developed among the
staff and students. Under the strong leadership of the new principal from
1979 to 1985, students who did not serve as good role models for other stu-
dents were reassigned to one of the least attractive schools across town. New
students were selectively admitted by the school, based largely on motivation
and ability to succeed academically.
The “Camelot days” began to recede after the district opened enrollment
in 1988. In an effort to create greater equity across schools, it allowed all
eighth-grade students to rank order their choices and then regulated the dis-
tribution of these choices according to quartile grade categories. One veteran
teacher described a drastic change in the academic abilities of students.
When we first started out as a magnet program and once we became grades 9 to
12, 85% or more of the students in the Academy alone went to college and
stayed for 4 years. . . . But other schools in the district started complaining that
Barrett was getting the cream of the crop: teachers and students. So central
office decided to make it more equitable, that they would do the selection pro-
cess. So they started sending students here who were not necessarily college
bound but any student who put Barrett as their first choice. And that took from
the program because the curriculum had to be revised. Rather than gear the cur-
riculum to college-bound students, we had to include some comprehensive
aspects with those kids who are not college bound. So I would say academi-
cally the level of our students has changed drastically.
Additional course levels and types of courses were introduced to match

the greater variety of perceived levels of ability and motivation among the
newly arriving students. Yet the school did not change its characteristically
high expectations and comparatively more rigorous graduation require-
ments. Students at Barrett, regardless of diploma track, were expected to take
more required courses and earn more credits to graduate than any other high
school in the district. As one teacher noted, “Even our general-level student is
required to earn 24 credits. They don’t need to earn that anywhere else. That’s
quite a benchmark, I think.” Students who had not earned sufficient credits in
courses that were necessary to graduate in the traditional 4-year time period
were advised to transfer to one of the other high schools where the require-
ments were less stringent. Prospective eighth-grade students were given the
message “if you do not want to work, do not come to Barrett.”
In response to the implementation of the comprehensive examinations for
all students, most teachers affirmed Barrett’s tradition of high academic per-
formance expectations. Many felt that their school had always been ahead of
the standards reform movement and was a model of academic excellence.
One teacher reflected, “Since we have been a magnet school, we have pushed
our students very hard to make them successful.” Because of its history of
high academic expectations, the new state examinations and diploma
requirements are, in some teachers’ eyes, not really a “reform” for Barrett at
all.
The administration had this attitude they should get as many kids as possible
into state comprehensive courses and have as many kids as possible take those
exams. And I think in retrospect that was the best idea because then the kids as a
whole had an attitude that there are high expectations of them.
Other teachers equated good teaching with aiming for high standards
expressed in standardized outcomes. These teachers saw the new exams as a
way to provide the needed direction and push for less effective teachers in
other schools, who, unlike themselves, were not aiming for common stan-
dards or expecting enough from their students. “I really think that the new
state exam might wake up a lot of people and make teachers really do the job
that they should have been doing for years,” said one teacher. Otherwise, they
“could just let things slide.” Another teacher pointed to the wider standards
context.
I have done some things with America’s Choice schools and with the National
Center on Education in the Economy, and those things are just incredibly stan-
dards based and seem really relevant to the things that we expect in this state
and this district. So I think there is this kind of synthesis of national, state, and
local requirements or goals that make sense to me.
Like their colleagues at Sheldon, some teachers at Barrett felt that the
examinations made students “too test conscious” while the teachers were
“focusing on covering a certain amount of material by a certain date.” Al-
though students “were maybe mastering more material because expec-
tations are raised,” teachers were no longer “teaching them to enjoy the learn-
ing process, to read and really get into what you are reading.” Various
teachers expressed profound concerns about the effects of the new exam poli-
cies on some students.
The fact that every kid in this state has to take comprehensive biology is a trav-
esty and a tragedy because there are some kids who will not be able to pass and
deserve a high school diploma. And a high school diploma does not mean that
you know what a nucleus is, nor what it can do, nor is that important to that kid.
And to say to me that a special education kid needs to know what a restriction
enzyme is, is a sin and . . . an abomination.
In 1999-2000, Barrett was accepted into the IB program. The ability to

again attract and select the brightest and most highly motivated youth in the
city provided an opportunity for the school to renew its somewhat slipping
status as a select college preparatory school after the open-enrollment policy
began in 1988. A Bradford Herald article announcing the program said,
“As new state standards force schools to raise the bar for all students, schools
like Barrett are installing a higher, international standard for their hardest-
working students” (Breen, 2000). A core group of teachers talked enthusias-
tically about how “the IB program is going to be the way that this school goes
back to where we were in the 1980s; and the district cannot mess this one up.”
Along with the administration, this core group of teachers chose to devote
more resources to the IB program and its students with the goal of preserving
the school’s image for the future by attracting “real committed students . . .
with the understanding of what they are getting into.” In relation to the per-
ception of unequal distribution of resources within the school, one teacher
expressed the view that “we will all benefit because we will have a good
strong IB program plus whatever monies come with it will be used for other
kids too.” As another teacher commented, the program “is raising standards.”
Not all teachers wholeheartedly embraced the new IB program, though. A
variety of teachers pointed to initial instances of privileging the new group of
IB students over other students. One teacher commented, “We are starting an
international baccalaureate program, so that we maintain getting the ‘best
kids.’ It creates an elitist atmosphere that has not gone away.” Under the lead-
ership of Barrett’s highly competitive principal from 1986 to 2002, teachers
who challenged the practices that contributed to Barrett’s standing in the sta-
tus hierarchy frequently found themselves punished and marginalized with
the least desirable schedules and room assignments, for example.
During the past two decades, Barrett Magnet School has challenged and
exploited the shifting social geography of the Bradford school district. Faced
with the decline of the industrial economy, the decay of the rust-belt city, and
the demise of the investment state, Barrett was dragged out of the poverty that
increasingly surrounded it by redefining its identity and creating a new real
and “imaginary” space for itself. First, it exploited the moves toward marketi-
zation of schooling, which reflected even wider trends toward the privatiza-
tion and commercialization of social space within the competitive market
economy by taking up the option of specialized magnet status. Second, with
the emergence of standards-based reform, Barrett aligned itself with the stan-
dards agenda to attract the elite and motivated students (and teachers) it
desired and to repel those it did not. Despite the more recent constraining
effects of standardization, Barrett has been able to capitalize on the opportu-
nities afforded by the standards agenda and, with its AP and IB students, has
attempted to rise above and define a special and protected space for itself
beyond the problems of homogenization that other urban schools encounter.
DIFFERENTIATED SPACE:
DURANT HIGH SCHOOL
Durant High School was established in 1971 as an alternative to the domi-

nant state bureaucratic space characterized by segregated subjects, taught in
enclosed, grade-leveled classrooms for 42-minute time periods, controlled
and monitored by a hierarchy of administrators and teachers. The founders of
Durant (parents, teachers, and students) envisioned a school in which stu-
dents developed their abilities and interests in learning and in thinking inde-
pendently about the world in which they lived, especially their immediate
urban community. The catalyst for the planning of Durant occurred in 1969,
during a Livingston High School faculty meeting called to address issues
associated with a changing student population and a series of race-related
student violence. A group of about 10 teachers argued that the traditional
organization of schooling was contributing to the pedagogical and disciplin-
ary problems at Livingston. One teacher explained,
It was about the time they redistricted in Bradford because of civil rights stuff.
And all of a sudden the clientele changed to a third lower economic, a third
middle, and a third high. And it threw the school into chaos. A lot of faculty had
no idea how to teach this kind of student—student learning difficulties and stu-
dents who didn’t come to school with a great deal of academic background
from home. And as a result, there was a great debate amongst the faculty as to
how do you teach in this kind of environment. . . . There were those who said,
“More rules, more regulations. Kids have to sit in their seats; . . . listen to the
lecture; . . . do their homework; . . . memorize.” . . . And a group of us were say-
ing, “Well, maybe we need to teach a little bit differently and experientially and
take them from where they are.”
Although the idea of a new kind of school was supported by several top
district administrators, the approval of the Bradford Board of Education in
1971 was largely because of the fact that the district was grappling with how
to desegregate its racially divided schools, and Durant appeared to be one
type of approach. With 10 teachers, a principal, a secretary, and 175 students
selected through a lottery, Durant began its 1st year inside a converted ware-
house, located in the central city of Bradford. However, as Durant was the
ultimate alternative space—a school literally without walls—classes without
grade levels were held in homes, church basements, community centers, and
throughout the city as befit particular topics. Using members of the commu-
nity as resources, students chose from an array of courses, including “Archi-
tecture” with a local architect, “Education Redesign” with the assistant
superintendent, and “Anatomy of a Business” with a vice president of a local
company. Each teacher met with a small group of students four mornings a
week to discuss program issues and provide guidance. On the fifth morning,
the entire school gathered together at the warehouse for a “town meeting,” a
weekly event in which school issues and policy were discussed, debated, and
voted on.
Since its establishment, Durant’s alternative mission has been in continual
contradiction with both the district and state policy agendas, and staff contin-
ually had to defend its distinctive space. At the end of its 1st year, teachers,
students, and administrators at Durant found themselves leading a successful
grassroots campaign to save their school from being eliminated by newly
elected school board members and a new superintendent in the midst of a dis-
ruptive struggle over district desegregation policies. After this 1st year, the
staff also decided to limit the wide smorgasbord of community classes, elimi-
nating the emergent problem of questionable learning environments and
inefficient use of time and resources. In addition to their small group, each
staff member now offered a “core class” in the morning that centered on student-
generated topical issues to be explored in-depth, using both classroom (still
any available space) and community resources. In the afternoon, stu-

dents pursued topics in a variety of spaces (e.g., independent studies and
community internships).
After the 2nd year, the school moved out of its old warehouse space and
into a former college building also located in the center of downtown Brad-
ford. There were now classrooms for all staff, and the smorgasbord of classes
from the 1st year along with the core class were recombined into a new pro-
gram of “extended” and afternoon classes. Specifically, the 2.5-hour
extended morning classes were developed according to student and staff
interests and examined in-depth current issues affecting the community. In
the afternoon, a variety of multidisciplinary courses were offered, such as
women’s studies and Black America, along with courses in math, history, sci-
ence, and art. The sociospatial relations and everyday rhythms had changed
somewhat from the initial 2 years, but student and teacher interests as well as
the surrounding city continued to orient the learning experience.
Throughout the 1970s, Durant had the authority to admit its own students.
However, the student population began to change by the middle of the 1970s,
after the initial group of largely White, middle-class students graduated and
increasing numbers of poor Black students began choosing Durant over
mostly all-Black schools in their immediate neighborhoods. Many of these
students arriving in the middle and late 1970s were described as less “driven
by that initial passion” associated with the creation of Durant as an alternative
educational space. In response, new processes were created to help select
incoming students and to encourage the reassignment of existing students to
other schools if they were not performing according to expectations. In 1981,
the district designated Durant (now located in an old community center) a
magnet school and eliminated its authority to admit its own students. Unable
to attract as many minority students as White students, and now in competi-
tion with newly created Barrett Magnet, the size of Durant’s student popu-
lation steadily decreased as racial proportions were enforced, from 150 stu-
dents in 1980 to 112 in 1985. As enrollment decreased, teachers were cut,
leading to a reduction in the number and variety of courses.
From the mid-1970s, new noncomprehensive diploma graduation
requirements were incorporated into Durant’s existing course offerings and
schedules. In the early and mid-1980s, science and math requirements in-
creased, and state noncomprehensive tests in history and science were added
to existing test requirements in reading, math, and writing. Although Durant
attempted to keep its program intact as much as possible, it was forced to
offer more courses in these subject areas, thus limiting the already dimin-
ished course offerings. By the late 1980s, the state mandated one more
noncomprehensive test in global studies, increasing the total number to six.
The district, in turn, enacted a new foreign language requirement, mandating

in 1990 two Carnegie units before 10th grade, and the total number of units
necessary for graduation increased from 20.5 to 23.5 for all freshmen in
1991. Durant successfully lobbied the Bradford Board of Education to allow
credits for students’ community service, turning service into a graduation
requirement. Increasing mandates for student performance also diminished
the school’s ability to fully utilize the community. Though Durant had aban-
doned the city-as-school concept of classes after the first 2 years, extended
classes were still designed to use the city as a learning environment, and stu-
dents were encouraged to pursue community internships and independent
studies as well as take college classes. However, with the increasing number
of mandates in general, these community resources and experiences became
increasingly difficult to include in the curriculum. As one staff member
explained,
As time changed and more credit requirements were placed upon them [stu-
dents], then we had to create a more rigid academic program. It got to a point
where a lot of the time we had to allow kids to grow and explore was pulled off
the table.
Toward the end of the 1980s, Durant began to struggle internally over how
to continue practicing its vision with the increasing graduation requirements,
a changing student population, considerable staff turnover, and the departure
of their inspirational leader and founding principal in 1987. Under the new
leadership of an internally appointed principal, the staff increased student
enrollment and fiercely debated the best ways to assess learning and hold stu-
dents accountable to demonstrating their accomplishments. A yearlong,
independent “senior project” had been practiced since the 1st year of the
school, but additional forms of assessment were advocated by the new princi-
pal and teachers who joined the staff in the late 1980s. In 1987, Durant moved
from its third downtown site to a former automotive shop 1 mile from the city
center. No longer situated in the heart of the city, only community service one
morning a week remained as a primary vehicle for community connections,
and classes increasingly stayed enclosed within the school building.
Although the state and district were issuing graduation mandates, the per-
centage of poor, minority students increased markedly. This “dramatic”
change enabled Durant to fill its magnet school racial quotas and to increase
overall student enrollment. However, according to several staff members, the
increase in students in poverty now made it increasingly difficult for teachers
to reconcile Durant’s mission with the new district and state mandates. One
staff member described the student body in the early to mid-1990s, as

follows:
I would say . . . maybe 60% of these kids were not living with parents. They
were living with aunts, cousins, and they were living on the streets. They were
bumped from one house to another. This kid’s mother’s arms were broken be-
cause the boyfriend thought the mother was stealing drugs and then they forced
the kids to pass drugs in the street because he was 14 and if he got arrested, it
would be a quick sentence. The stuff I was getting into! This is a kid who’s got
to learn binomial equations. Come on!
Standardization also meant that life-absorbing questions could no longer

be addressed in the curriculum. With the new state comprehensive testing
policy initiated in 1996, Durant’s unique mission of in-depth, individualized
learning was in peril. Until this point, teachers had been able to balance pre-
paring students for the state minimum competency tests with supporting stu-
dents’ pursuit of individualized interests and their development of indepen-
dent and critical thinking. But the new, high-stakes comprehensive exams
encompassed so much more specific content that teachers felt they needed to
fundamentally alter their courses and teaching methods to facilitate memori-
zation and topic coverage. In addition, the new comprehensive tests in math,
history, and science required yearlong course preparation of all students to
ensure passage. It was harder for early morning and afternoon courses unre-
lated to the tests to continue. Although staff continued to support the school’s
commitment to student demonstrations and exhibitions, they found it
increasingly frustrating and exhausting to teach to the tests and uphold
Durant’s unique system of education. One teacher described how afternoon
classes that had always been flexible and “based on what the kids were inter-
ested in” were now “geared toward” the state tests and “more teacher-
directed.” In the past, the teacher explained, “I would teach based on making
sure kids understood things.” Now all that mattered was “getting through the
curriculum” and preparing for the tests, which the teacher characterized as
“very frustrating.” Another teacher who had once taught highly engaging
classes on Native American history, ethics, and Vietnam, had been “reduced
to U.S. History I and II [and] World History I and II.”
As Durant reeled internally over the high-stakes testing policies, it also
began a campaign, led by its principal, to secure a variance from the man-
dated tests to preserve the school’s mission. Arguing that Durant’s education
program reached and even exceeded the new state standards, the school lob-
bied the newly appointed state commissioner of education for permission to
substitute its own system of assessments—demonstrations, exhibitions,
long-term projects—for standardized tests. The state firmly denied the
request, maintaining that any alternative assessments to the state exams had
to be externally developed. Individual school assessments could no longer be
trusted to ensure high standards. The state’s testing mandates had a perva-
sively negative impact on Durant. The school’s innovative mission of foster-
ing independent learning, the antithesis of the state’s agenda, could no longer
be maintained under the conditions of a high-stakes standardized testing pol-
icy as teachers were compelled, against their professional beliefs and judg-
ment, to abandon their curricula and teaching methods because they knew
that their students’ futures were at risk. As a result, Durant reverted, in some
ways, to being a small conventional high school that subscribed to standard-
ized state curricula and traditional teaching methods.
This sociospatial history of Durant illustrates the constraining impact of
urban demographic shifts and the state standards reform policies on an inno-
vative public secondary school and its efforts to define and occupy an alterna-
tive educational space. Standardization has produced an increasingly homo-
geneous and “abstract” school space that has reduced, constrained, and/or
eliminated Durant’s innovative capacity to provide a student- and teacher-
initiated, as well as community-oriented, educational experience. The pur-
pose and measure of successful teaching and learning at Durant are now
largely identical with and statistically comparable to all other public second-
ary schools, although the struggle for exceptionality still continues.
SCHOOL INTERRELATIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY
The sociospatial changes at Sheldon, Barrett, and Durant illustrate how

changes within any one school are interrelated with other schools and with
the broader sociospatial changes occurring in the community, region, state,
and increasingly throughout the world. Change is not only an isolated or uni-
versal process of generalized “lessons” or stages (e.g., Fullan, 1993). It is
grounded in space and time and more particularly in these spaces at this time.
Instances of educational change are part of the sociospatial changes occur-
ring at and between all spatial scales—individual, local, regional, state,
national, international, and transnational (Agnew, 2002). Schools and local
communities are embedded (perform as subsystems) within networks of
social, economic, and political forces that produce the spatial configurations
of people and relationships (Harvey, 1989; Soja, 1985). These cases also
demonstrate that school space has become more narrowly constrained by
state policy makers, producing a more homogeneous, fragmented, and hier-
archical space that resembles the sociospatial changes occurring throughout
and between societies in the 21st century (Biel, 2000; Kalb, van der Land,
Staring, van Steenbergen, & Wilterdink, 2000; Stromquist, 2002). Urbaniza-

tion and racial segregation in Bradford, along with the emergence of the
standards-based reform movement, are consequences of and responses to
changing cultural-political-economic conditions associated with interna-
tional political-economic crises and consequent restructuring for the emerg-
ing global, “knowledge” economy (Hargreaves, 2003; Stromquist, 2002).
These international forces as well as local business interests prompted
and promoted market competition between schools and standards-based,
performance-driven, quantifiable reform initiatives.
Prior to the introduction of magnet schools and competitive choice poli-
cies in the 1980s, the secondary schools in Bradford, with the exception of
alternatives such as Durant, largely reflected the racial and class segregated
(re)settlement patterns of the neighborhoods surrounding each school. As
neighborhood schools, before the acceleration of White and bright flight in
the 1980s, there was a more widely shared social (community) and economic
(property value) investment among the teachers in the success of each city
school. As the sociospatial patterns that comprised the relations within and
among the community, neighborhood, and school continued to change in the
1970s and 1980s, a new competitive dynamic emerged between high schools
for the remaining middle- and upper-middle-class families in Bradford. In
this context of changing spatialization, the three Bradford schools took dif-
ferent yet interrelated paths.
Barrett moved itself to the top of the spatial and academic status hierarchy
by competing for and attracting college-bound, high-status high achievers.
Barrett associated itself with high achievement in the new standards-based
reform movement to attract good clients and teachers and attempted to avoid
the worst effects of centralized homogenization by rising above the state
standardized assessments through its AP and IB programs. Barrett’s “new
professionals” embraced the standards agenda because it furthered their elite
aspirations as a school, enhancing the “magnetic” quality of the school’s
imaginary space, of which they felt proud. However, Barrett was also frag-
mented. As the administration strove to maintain its status, the school culture
became less responsive to and inclusive of the students and teachers who did
not enhance the school’s image. In the new social geography of the American
city, magnets both attract and repel. They divert some of the tide of White and
bright flight into an elite pool of academically motivated students and their
parents. They attract teachers and leaders who are sympathetic to the new
standards agenda and who, as “new professionals,” adhere to its principles.
They also attract the resources of private and state investment that attach
themselves to these specialized, niche initiatives. At the same time, although
magnets draw the educational “tourists” who have the social capital to
choose and achieve, they repel underachieving or disruptive “vagabonds” to

the least desirable school spaces (Bauman, 1998).
Barrett’s gain was Sheldon’s loss. In seesaw fashion, the ascent of one was
linked to the fall of the other. Some of this effect was direct as Sheldon lost
high-achieving students to Barrett and received an influx of poor, minority
students from the closure of Drake High School on the other side of town.
Some of the spatial displacement was less direct, as school-choice competi-
tion policies expanded the migrations of students in other sections of the city.
Both changes destroyed Sheldon’s connection to its immediate community.
Moreover, as Sheldon’s average family income levels and academic status
sank along with the property values in the city, the representational space of
standardization reinforced “old guard” teachers’ traditional practices, which
further marginalized their students. The internal value identity of a Bradford
high school is now more narrowly circumscribed by state-imposed defini-
tions and mass-mediated images (i.e., “school report cards”) of success and
failure. In the stigmatized “imaginary” space of Sheldon, standardization
also restricted some of the younger teachers’ capacity to innovate, with the
result that they lost pride in their teaching as well as in their students. The rep-
utation, value, and survival of a high school in Bradford are now largely
dependent on the kinds of students the school is able to attract. Because the
establishment of a high-status image was key to Barrett’s success, in 2000 the
Bradford district administration announced the creation of the Center for
Advanced Placement Studies at Sheldon, intended to enhance the school’s
competitive position and capacity to select from a shrinking pool of middle-
and upper-middle-class families.
Durant is the most striking example of a school seeking to redefine the
space and mission of public schooling so it engages all students in learning.
This was its distinctive response to the “great debate” in the late 1960s. As the
numbers of White, middle-class students decreased significantly within the
total Bradford district population, many teachers in Durant, and also in the
other schools, described internal changes they had tried to make to respond to
the needs, backgrounds, and interests of the increasingly impoverished
minority student population. Yet in all three schools, these teacher-initiated
reforms were extinguished or constrained by the implementation of stan-
dardized measures of performance. As students became both more difficult
to teach and experienced less success at learning within an externally con-
trolled, academic, subject-centered curriculum, and exam-focused peda-
gogy, the state reinforced this system as the only possibility for all but the
most privileged. Although this standardization may or may not increase mea-
sured and tested achievement that improves apparent levels of basic compe-
tence, it does not, in teachers’ eyes, develop the deep, engaging learning that
gives all students, particularly the poorest, the chance to compete at the high-
est levels of the creative knowledge economy (Hargreaves, 2003). In the
Bradford school district, creativity, flexibility, and the opportunities that flow
from it are options only for the privileged, the educational tourists, who are in
the magnets or the AP and IB programs. Standardization is the bland diet of
teaching and learning that is enforced on the rest. Although the achievement
gap may or may not be narrowing in Bradford, the learning gap clearly is not.
Urbanization and racial segregation in Bradford, along with the emer-
gence of the state-corporate standards-based reform movement, are conse-
quences of and responses to changing cultural-political-economic conditions
in the emerging global, knowledge economy. Not only do these changing
spatial forces appear to have produced a declining ability and freedom for
most students, teachers, schools, and communities, except the most privi-
leged, to produce their own spatiality, they have also undermined the
sustainability of school improvement efforts by detracting from their depth
(in terms of learning goals) and by producing measured improvement only in
some schools to the significant environmental cost of others around them.
Sustainable improvement should benefit not just some students but all of
them. In today’s increasingly interconnected world, actions in any one school
inevitably affect others around it (Hargreaves & Fink, 2004). The quest for
sustainable and socially just improvement should therefore force all leaders
and administrators to acknowledge our responsibilities to those who live and
learn outside our own walls, to appreciate that we truly are all interconnected,
and to acknowledge that in current reform terms, space is, indeed, the final
frontier.
NOTE
1. Complete references are not provided because they would reveal the name of the city under
investigation, which the authors prefer to be kept anonymous.
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Michael Baker is a Ph.D. candidate in education at the Margaret Warner Graduate School of
Education and Human Development, University of Rochester. He is a former high school English
teacher and community college instructor in speech communication. His prior graduate studies
at the University of Washington focused on the phenomenology of communication. His disserta-
tion research concerns the historical sociology of contemporary education reform.
Martha Foote is director of research for the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a
coalition of small high schools that promotes and supports the use of performance-based assess-
ments. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in teaching, curriculum, and change at the Margaret Warner
Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the University of Rochester. Her
research interests include small schools, assessment, and high-stakes testing.

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Educational Administration Quarterly

Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2006) 90-123

Keywords: space; urbanization; standards-based reform; secondary schools;

of the city of “Bradford.” The article concludes by returning to a central ques-

• space is a social as well as a physical phenomenon (Lefebvre, 1979);

Lefebvre (1991) developed an integrated definition of social space com-

Instead, social relations within a particular society reflect the interrelated

developed to promote economic interaction and further the interests of the

(everyday life) and extensive (geographical) reach of capital, creating a new

porary patterns of school choice create inclusions and exclusions of precisely

• more homogenous—with places being more interchangeable,

SCHOOLS, SPACE, AND THE CITY

Changing spatialization, interrelated with the global expansion of capital-

leaving large concentrations of poor and low-status social groups behind

A Nation at Risk reinforced the historical relation between education and

URBANIZATION AND URBAN SCHOOL CRISES

City of Bradford Bradford City School District

and underfunded classrooms. Bradford schools were segregated not only by

Sheldon Barrett Durant

Total students 1,939 1,071 200

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics (2000-2001).

The recent history of Sheldon is a story of sociospatial transformation

for noncomprehensive students continued with the instigation of district and

During the 1980s and 1990s, Sheldon’s surrounding neighborhoods were

parochial schools.” For many veteran teachers, as Sheldon’s standing in the

When the implementation of the comprehensive diploma graduation

They [building and district administrators] are trying to develop a teacher-

working to avoid being replaced, turned over to a private company or the

Additional course levels and types of courses were introduced to match

In 1999-2000, Barrett was accepted into the IB program. The ability to

Durant High School was established in 1971 as an alternative to the domi-

any available space) and community resources. In the afternoon, stu-

The district, in turn, enacted a new foreign language requirement, mandating

staff member described the student body in the early to mid-1990s, as

Standardization also meant that life-absorbing questions could no longer

SCHOOL INTERRELATIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY

The sociospatial changes at Sheldon, Barrett, and Durant illustrate how

Staring, van Steenbergen, & Wilterdink, 2000; Stromquist, 2002). Urbaniza-

choose and achieve, they repel underachieving or disruptive “vagabonds” to

Ilon, L. (1997). Educational repercussions of a global system of production. In W. K. Cummings

Stromquist, N. (2002). Education in a globalized world: The connectivity of economic power,

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