Kara Finnigan
PhD, University of Wisconsin - Madison (educational policy studies)
MA, Stanford University (education administration and policy analysis)
BA, Dartmouth College (English)
Kara Finnigan joined the Warner School in 2003. She teaches in the educational leadership program and is the director of the doctoral and master's programs in educational policy. Her courses focus on educational policy and politics, sociology of education, and research methods.
Finnigan began her work in education as a substitute teacher in Anchorage, Alaska. She has conducted research and evaluations of K-12 educational policies and programs at the local, state, and federal levels for more than 19 years through her work at several prominent national research organizations, including SRI International, RPP International, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. She has written extensively on the topics of low-performing schools and high-stakes accountability, principal leadership, teacher motivation, and charter schools. Finnigan’s research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science; employs both qualitative and quantitative methods; and focuses on urban school districts. She has published articles in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Educational Change, Educational Policy, Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of School Leadership, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Journal of School Choice, Urban Review, and Education Policy Analysis Archives.
Finnigan’s current research focuses on social network analysis in low-performing schools and districts; school improvement under sanction; inter-district choice; district-wide reform; accountability policies; school closure; and the role of districts and states in school improvement. She is Associate Editor of the Social and Institutional Analysis section of the American Educational Research Journal.
MA, Stanford University (education administration and policy analysis)
BA, Dartmouth College (English)
Kara Finnigan joined the Warner School in 2003. She teaches in the educational leadership program and is the director of the doctoral and master's programs in educational policy. Her courses focus on educational policy and politics, sociology of education, and research methods.
Finnigan began her work in education as a substitute teacher in Anchorage, Alaska. She has conducted research and evaluations of K-12 educational policies and programs at the local, state, and federal levels for more than 19 years through her work at several prominent national research organizations, including SRI International, RPP International, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. She has written extensively on the topics of low-performing schools and high-stakes accountability, principal leadership, teacher motivation, and charter schools. Finnigan’s research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science; employs both qualitative and quantitative methods; and focuses on urban school districts. She has published articles in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Educational Change, Educational Policy, Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of School Leadership, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Journal of School Choice, Urban Review, and Education Policy Analysis Archives.
Finnigan’s current research focuses on social network analysis in low-performing schools and districts; school improvement under sanction; inter-district choice; district-wide reform; accountability policies; school closure; and the role of districts and states in school improvement. She is Associate Editor of the Social and Institutional Analysis section of the American Educational Research Journal.
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Objective: Through this comparative analysis we seek to tease out the effects of the ruling on patterns of inequity between urban and suburban school districts over time. We specifically examine how districts within these metro areas differed over time in terms of patterns of school
segregation, fiscal resources, and academic performance.
Research Design: We employed qualitative case study methodology. We purposively selected three case study districts within each of the four metro areas (total of 12 school districts) based on their contextual status in 1970, i.e., whether they were in each of these three categories: urban,
segregated suburban, or affluent suburban. We compared them along three dimensions: patterns of segregation, academic outcomes, and fiscal resources.
Conclusions: We found that the segregated and high poverty districts in the three metro areas where courts left districts intact (Detroit, Philadelphia, and St. Louis) have been, since Milliken, increasingly hemmed in by their boundaries: struggling with growing concentrations of need, low resources to meet those needs, and as a result falling into fiscal and academic
decline. In contrast, the maintenance of district boundaries by the courts has allowed the affluent suburbs in these contexts, over time, to benefit from a number of policies and practices that allowed them to accrue and protect advantage through exclusionary zoning policies and housing discrimination. Together, these policies have promoted and protected
the affluence and advantage in each of these contexts, which has in turn attracted investment and allowed these districts to maintain strong financial standing over time. Our study suggests that socially constructed political boundaries, like school district boundary lines, by carving up political geography along the lines of race and class, can take on an active role in the reproduction of inequality.