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This paper is an analysis of the power of political images and policy narratives. I argue that the debate over desegregation policies in Los Angeles, California in the 1970s established two dominant policy images about the purposes of public schools: They are meant to promote both academic achievement and racial equality. Each of these images included several policy narratives to support it. Over the next two decades, these images remained. Eventually, however, one became more dominant over the other. As the district moved away from desegregation, the image of schools as promoters of equality diminished, and the academic achievement image took precedence. This was true for several district policies, including policies that originated as part of the desegregation plan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that citizens are capable of developing and promoting complex policy symbols, and that these symbols include supporting narratives that explain and justify them. Based on a study of education policies in Los Angeles, California, I use interpretive methods to reconstruct and analyze these narratives. I find that citizens developed two specific policy symbols while the district was engulfed in a desegregation debate; citizens identified schools as places where students gained academic knowledge and as institutions that affected broader race relations. However, I also find that education policy in Los Angeles could not support these two symbols over a long period of time, and that a political movement to end mandatory busing eventually caused the academic symbol to become dominant. This trend reflects broader national discussions, in which education is now discussed in terms of standards and accountability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of the social construction of school desegregation in Los Angeles, California. Particular emphasis is placed on how magnet schools were presented to area residents in the local press over a period of more than three decades. I use quantitative and qualitative techniques with 355 newspaper articles. I find that magnet schools were originally discussed as part of a larger desegregation program, but that references to desegregation declined steadily. Magnet schools are now discussed as providers of academic excellence, and desegregation issues are largely ignored. This follows the current trend in political and academic circles, in which rhetoric surrounding education is increasingly focused on standards and accountability rather than equality and access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of policy narratives in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Based on the ideas of policy design (Schneider and Ingram) and policy images (Baumgartner and Jones), I show that a broader “policy narrative,” which is built on a policy image and its supporting rhetoric, can be a very powerful motivator among residents in a particular geographic region. In this case, the city’s three largest ethnic groups—whites, blacks, and Latinos—each used different narratives to justify their positions on school desegregation policy. Blacks and whites focused on the language of academic quality and race relations to explain why they did or did not support busing for desegregation. Latinos attempted to join the primary black and white narratives, but were not able to reframe either discussion to fit their own community’s needs. Because they were never a significant part of the discussion, Latinos today, though they comprise the vast majority of the district’s students, do not benefit from post-desegregation district policies as much as the other two groups do. Thus, not only can policy narratives be developed and used by the general public (as opposed to political elites), but a group’s skills in using these narratives can also have a significant impact on the level of resources they later gain from public institutions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an examination of the development of policy narratives by different racial groups, based on a case study of desegregation in the Los Angeles Unified School District. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]