Elusive Equity

"Elusive Equity" chronicles South Africas efforts to fashion a racially equitable state education system from the ashes of apartheid. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made in school finance, teacher assignment policies, governance, curriculum, higher education, and other areas.

Elusive Equity chronicles South Africa's efforts to fashion a racially equitable state education system from the ashes of apartheid. The policymakers who came to power with Nelson Mandela in 1994 inherited and education system designed to further the racist goals of apartheid. Their massive challenge was to transform that system, which lavished human and financial resources on schools serving white students while systematically starving those serving African, coloured, and Indian learners, into one that would offer quality education to all persons, regardless of their race. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd describe and evaluate the strategies that South Africa pursued in its quest for racial equity. They draw on previously unpublished data, interviews with key officials, and visits to dozens of schools to describe the changes made in school finance, teacher assignment policies, governance, curriculum, higher education, and other areas. They conclude that the country has made remarkable progress toward equity in the sense of equal treatment of persons of all races. For several reasons, however, the country has been far less successful in promoting equal educational opportunity or educational adequacy. Thus equity has remained elusive. The book is unique in combining the perceptive observations of a skilled education journalist with the analytical skills of an academic policy expert. Richly textured descriptions of how South Africa's education reforms have affected schools at the grass-roots level are combined with careful analysis of enrollment, governance, and budget data at the school, provincial, and national levels. The result is a compelling and comprehensive study of South Africa's first decade of education reform in the post-apartheid period.

Dr. Pandora B. Angel was a practicing physician for thirty years. She spent twenty-three of those years as an emergency physician at a university medical center and an affiliated hospital. In Elusive Equity, Empathy, and Empowerment, she shares the challenges she faced as a female emergency physician in what is still perceived as a male profession. Addressing the gender bias and inequality she experienced while striving for and achieving a career in medicine, this memoir addresses workforce power and control, double standards, gender bias, discrimination, the boys’ club, harassment, contrived narratives for predetermined goals, retaliation, disregard for objective data, and misconceptions. Through thoughtful vignettes, lessons, and appendices, this memoir explores the persistent culture of inequity in the workplace from Angel’s perspective as a female physician in a male-dominated field. Teaching tools and lessons are provided at the end of each chapter to stimulate wider discussions of inequality, harassment, bias, and discrimination that still occur.

Elusive Justice addresses how educators think about and act upon, differences in schools - be they based on race, gender, class, or disability - and how discourse and practice about such differences are intimately bound up with educational justice. Rather than skip over contentious or uncomfortable dialogues about difference, Thea Abu El-Haj tackles them head on. Through rich and detailed ethnographic portraits of two schools with a commitment to social justice, she analyzes the ways discourses about difference provide a key site for both producing and resisting inequalities, and examines the dilemmas that emerge from either focusing on or ignoring them. In interrogating fundamental assumptions about difference and equity, Abu El-Haj deftly blends critique with a search for hope and possibility, to ultimately argue for ways educators might translate ideals about justice into effective practice.

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Andreas Schleicher - initiator of PISA and an international authority on education policy - offers a unique perspective on education reform.