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Rage Against the Machine: The Legacy of Education Leaders’ Valiant Struggle for Social Justice in Abbeville v. South Carolina

2020; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1052684619899612

2631-9659

Henry Tran, Mazen Aziz, Sara Frakes Reinhardt,

Diverse Education Studies and Reforms

Purpose: Abbeville v. South Carolina was a nearly three-decade long school funding lawsuit initiated by the education leaders of South Carolina's most rural and impoverished school districts that primarily educated students of color. Recently, the State Supreme Court dismissed the entire case. Guided by a multiperspective framework of social justice, one year after the dismissal, we sought to understand the perspectives and experiences of five of the original plaintiff superintendents who either initiated or engaged in the court hearings for the case. These education leaders shared unique insights on their valiant struggle against systemic inequities in order to improve the quality of their students’ education. Research method: To address our research questions, we relied on an intrinsic retrospective case study methodology that relies on face-to-face semistructured interview data collection with five of the original superintendents who were involved in the legacy case. We then supplemented the qualitative findings with quantitative descriptive data and results from our differences-in-differences analyses to support the qualitative analysis. Findings: Participants shared rich detailed experiences concerning both the struggle their districts faced that necessitated the lawsuit and the struggle they faced while fighting to ameliorate those conditions. There was a mixed reaction concerning whether participants felt the struggle was worth the effort, yet they universally felt the conditions have not improved for their districts. Some further felt that the funding gap between the rich (urban/suburban) school districts and their poor rural counterparts has actually widened. These perceptions were supported by the revenue data.