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The impact which organizational decline in higher education has on African American students and institutional management of organizational decline can influence the access and success of African American students on predominantly White campuses. With higher education fighting for continued existence as a result of enrollment reductions and a shrinking economy, and the growing disparity between African Americans and White Americans, the press for survival prevails for both institutions and cultures. This study examined the effects which institutional decline in public higher education has upon African American students. Specifically, the study focused on how educational administrators and African American students in four Massachusetts institutions of higher learning described and explained the extent of the decline and their perceptions of its short-term and long-term effects. Various approaches and strategies utilized during decline and how they promoted or impeded an institution's ability to support goals and action related to participation of African American students were explored in the study. Attention was given to the different perceptions surrounding these issues in order to present a holistic and in-depth understanding of the dimensions of decline as it impacts African American students. Focus group interviews were used to explore and identify the complexity of these issues. The findings of the study indicate that the perceptions of both students and educational administrators were that African American students had been affected by the impact of organizational decline in terms of reduction and elimination of programs and services which are used and needed by this student population to access higher education as well as to survive in college environments which are hostile and unfriendly. The exploratory nature of this study, through the perceptions and reflections of African American students and educational administrators responsible to and for this population, should deepen the understanding within the academy regarding access and success of African American students during an era of decline.

Parent involvement in political activities is a rare form of parent participation. Most parents who take an interest in schools become involved with their child's classroom, attend school functions and activities, assist with fundraisers, attend PTA meetings. As the process for funding public school education has become more difficult and as decisions about education become more political, some parents have reacted to that trend and have become involved in the politics themselves. Changes in laws and education funding formulas in Massachusetts over the last decade has caused parents to become more protective, more vigilant of the school budget process, and of the way politicians position themselves on school issues. This is the case study of six parents who have been involved in schools and community politics over a decade in Millville, a community in western Massachusetts. The population of Millville is mainly elderly and White, while the school population is more than seventy percent minority, the majority of whom are Puerto Ricans. This has caused a clash of culture, age, and priorities. The schools have become a political battleground, and with parents no strangers to those battles as they fight to protect the rights of children to an equitable education. The involvement of these parents has been directly influenced by the enactment of a tax limitation proposal known as Proposition 2 1/2. A document review reveals the nature of the political climate of the Commonwealth during the last decade as it influenced local and state decision making about public schools and the funding of them. This study explores for what reasons parents participate in parent involvement through governance activities; how the climate of the last decade has influenced the types of activities in which parents engage; why parents make governance activities their priority; how their earlier experiences in parent involvement were similar to or different from the types of activities they find themselves engaged in now; how their earlier impressions of their involvement different from the current climate for parental involvement; and what types of parent involvement, given the current political climate of the Commonwealth, are most important now.

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The issue of public education has long been studied and continues to stymie communities as they diligently attempt to create effective educational opportunities. This Afrocentric study aims to help students, parents, educators, advocates, legislators and everyone concerned about the future of public education to think differently about how it is funded. This work essentially is an Afrocentric legal analysis of the law that governs the funding of K-12 public education in Pennsylvania. Employing an Afrocentric methodology, this study examines the racial significance of Pennsylvania's K-12 public education funding scheme. Specifically, it examines the extent to which, although race neutral on its face, the funding scheme employs other proxies for racism that reduce African agency and perpetuate the oppression of African Americans. Because Philadelphia is the state's largest predominantly African-American school district, it is a useful case study for examining the racial significance of the funding scheme. / African American Studies