“Lisa Stulberg transforms the debate on race and educational choice in the United States. This book made a profound impression on me, fundamentally challenging my long-standing critique of school-choice programs for students of color.”
—Jean Anyon, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

“Lisa Stulberg is an important and distinctive voice in American education. In Race, Schools, and Hope, she engages the hard questions and steadfastly refuses to oversimplify. This is a critical, self-reflective, and ultimately hopeful book.”
—James Forman, Jr., Georgetown Law School

“Race, Schools, and Hope serves as a poignant reminder that despite America’s history of racism in education there are many communities that still view education as a means to further individual and collective aspirations. This book is a must-read for activists and educators who understand how critical education is in advancing civil rights and furthering community empowerment.”
—Pedro Noguera, New York University

This provocative book helps us to make sense of why and how African Americans participate in and lead school-choice reforms. The author argues that regardless of the success or failure of these reforms, they represent an important political phenomenon in American schooling and in African American history and politics. The first section of the book focuses on African American school-choice in the post-Brown period, examining how these reforms became a response to desegregation politics and policies. The second section focuses on a charter school in Oakland, California, that the author helped to found at a time when Oakland’s public schools were severely underserving African American students.

Lisa M. Stulberg is an assistant professor of educational sociology at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.