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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Suburban public schools have become the predominant form of American education in the past fifty years. As a number of commentators have noted, however, historians have devoted relatively little attention to the development of these educational systems. This is surprising, given the importance of schools in the development of many suburban communities, especially during the postwar era. Education became a critical element in suburban struggles to create distinctive local identities in the wake of metropolitan development and liberal reform. Neighborhood schools were sites of political conflict over these issues in Southern California and elsewhere, as suburbanites asserted their independence as property owners. Recent studies have documented how this contributed to a widespread “tax revolt” during the latter 1970s, and a sharp conservative turn in politics that accompanied it. Little has been written, however, about how the rise of such “localism” in suburban political culture affected the schools.
1 On this point, see Dougherty, Jack, “Bridging the Gap between Urban, Suburban and Educational History,” in Rethinking the History of American Education, eds. Reese, William J. and Rury, John L. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 245–59. Also see Lassiter, Matthew D., “Schools and Housing in Metropolitan History: An Introduction,” Journal of Urban History 38 (March 2012): 195–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Self, Robert O., “Prelude to the Tax Revolt: The Politics of the ‘Tax Dollar’ in Postwar California,” in The New Suburban History, eds. Kruse, Kevin M. and Sugrue, Thomas J. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 144–60; McGirr, Lisa, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), Chapter 2.Google Scholar
3 Love, Mindi C., Johnson County, Kansas: A Pictorial History, 1825–2005 (Shawnee, KS: Johnson County Museum, 2006), 162–64; “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” Johnson County Sun, July 2, 1976, 58 (Special Issue: Bicentennial History of Johnson County).Google Scholar
4 For a concise statement of this issue, see Hawley, Amos H. and Zimmer, Basil G., The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1970), Chapter 1, “The Metropolitan Problem.” On p. 2, they noted, “Metropolitan growth has divided among many governmental units what are actually indivisible problems.”Google Scholar
5 Ostram, Vincent, Tiebout, Charles, and Warren, Robert D., “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry,” The American Political Science Review, LV (1961): 831–42; Gulick, Luther, The Metropolitan Problem and American Ideas (New York: Knopf, Alfred A., 1962), passim. On schooling, see Warner Bloomberg, Jr. and Sunshine, Morris, Suburban Power Structures and Public Education (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963), Chapters V and VI.Google Scholar
6 Hawley, and Zimmer, , The Metropolitan Community, Chapters 5 and 6.Google Scholar
7 “Outgoing Superintendent Explains Opposition to One Big District,” The Johnson County Sun, March 28, 1968 (“Shawnee Mission Schools, 1968,” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library, Overland Park, KS). Interestingly, there was no anti-communist rhetoric reported in connection with disputes in Shawnee Mission.Google Scholar
8 Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1989), Chapter 5; on tie role of Nichols as a suburban developer during this formative period, see Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 177–78. Jackson described Nichols as “qualitatively the most successful American developer” of suburban communities (177).Google Scholar
9 For an overview of desegregation struggles in the region, see Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Jenkins v. Missouri (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), passim. Major controversies over race and schooling occurred well after the events described in this paper. Regarding the history of schooling for the local Black community, which numbered around 1,000 throughout the period, and the 1949 Kansas Supreme Court decision that ended segregated schooling there, see The Shawnee Sesquicentennial Committee, A Pictorial History of Shawnee: Celebrating Shawnee's Sesquicentennial, 1856–2006 (Lawrence, KS: Sunflower Publishing, 2006), 37–38.Google Scholar
10 On the tendency of wealthy suburbanites to view local institutions in these terms, especially with respect to “hoarding of opportunity,” see Kruse, Kevin M. and Sugrue, Thomas J., “Introduction,” The New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 6. Regarding larger patterns of urban and suburban educational development, see Rury, John L. and Satcioglu, Argun, “Suburban Advantage: Opportunity Hoarding and Secondary Attainment in the Postwar Metropolitan Northeast, 1940–1980,” American Journal of Education, 118 (May 2011): 307–42. The classic study of the development of urban school systems and the role of elite groups is Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), Part IV, where he described the “interlocking directorate” of like-minded civic leaders who promoted organizational reform in the schools. Tyack quotes David Hammack's analysis of social groups supporting school centralization in New York, which identified “three over-lapping elites: aggressive modernizers from business and the professions, advocates of efficient, non-partisan municipal government, and moral reformers determined to uphold Protestant values in polyglot New York City” (149). These groups appealed to somewhat different constituencies, but were united in support of bureaucratic reform. In short, centralization was supported by a coalition of affluent, well-educated, and elitist city residents determined to impose an ostensibly cosmopolitan vision upon advocates of localism and the ward system.Google Scholar
11 Marquette, Deanna, The Historical Development of Johnson County (Overland Park, KS: Johnson County Center for Local History, Johnson County Community College, 1988), 12.Google Scholar
12 Love, , Johnson County, Kansas, 96–97; “Taxes Turned Nichols Toward Kansas Sites,” Johnson County Sun, July 2, 1976, 39. This article featured a lengthy interview with Nichol's son, Miller, about his father's approach to suburban development.Google Scholar
13 Worley, William S., J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), Chapter 4. Also see Shortridge, James R., Cities on the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 301–2. On the influence of Nichols, the Country Club District and the Plaza, also see Mayer, Martin, The Builders: Houses, People, Neighborhoods, Governments, Money (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 57–59.Google Scholar
14 On the importance of exclusion, see Nichols, Jesse Clyde, “When You Buy a Home Site You Make an Investment: Try to Make It a Safe One, “Good Housekeeping 76 (February 1923), 38–39, 172–76. See the discussion of this in The Suburb Reader, Chapter 8, “The Tools of Exclusion,” Becky Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese. On Nichols's openness to Jewish buyers, see Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, 151.Google Scholar
15 Shortridge, , Cities on the Plains, 301–2; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 115; Worley, , J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, Chapters 7 and 8.Google Scholar
16 Worley, , J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, Chapter 6.Google Scholar
17 Worley, , J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, 83–84. Worley notes that in 1930 more than half of the 1,325 individuals listed on the social register lived in Nichols's settlements, and that by 1975 the proportion had increased to more than eighty percent of 2,000 registrants, with a third living on the Kansas side of the border and 20 percent in Mission Hills alone. This was an unusually high concentration of wealth and social influence in what would become the geographic heart of opposition to consolidation in SMSD.Google Scholar
18 Barnes, Elizabeth E., Historic Johnson County: A Bird's Eye View of the Development of the Area (Shawnee, KS: Neff Publications, 1969), passim; Love, Johnson County, Kansas.Google Scholar
19 These factors were clearly correlated quite highly. In fact, all three are. correlated at about 0.9, suggesting that they reflect underlying social status differences that clearly distinguished these settings. All of these communities counted fewer than six thousand residents in 1960, with the exception of Prairie Village and newly established Overland Park, both with about 25,000. Some of the older Nichols communities, such as Westwood and Westwood Hills, were too small to be included in the published census tables.Google Scholar
20 Love, , Johnson County, Kansas, 161; Worley, , J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City, 271–73; Interview with Franklin McFarland (pseudonym) April 2012.Google Scholar
21 Farson, Dave, Better than Necessary: A Celebrational History of Shawnee Mission North High School (Shawnee, KS: Shawnee Mission School District, 1981), 6. He reports the vote to establish the school at 1,027–952. Also see Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 161–62, and Barnes, , Historic Johnson County, 28. Brooks, Elizabeth, “Establishing the First Rural High School,” Johnson County Sun, March 20, 1992, 4E. The school's establishment, of course, preceded development of most of the Nichols communities to the east and thus did not run afoul of localist sentiments that emerged later, during the postwar era.Google Scholar
22 “Dedicate Shawnee Unit,” Kansas City Times, October 12, 1937, 1; “An Architectural Drawing of the New Proposed Shawnee Mission High School Building,” The Suburban News, May 2, 1941, “Schools” Clippings File, Johnson County Museum, Shawnee, KS.Google Scholar
23 “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” 58; Interview with Franklin McFarland.Google Scholar
24 Quoted in Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 163.Google Scholar
25 “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground,” 58.Google Scholar
26 “The School Debt on Increase in Northeast Johnson County,” Kansas City Star, January 3, 1954, 20E; Barnes, Elizabeth E., “Phenomenal School Growth,” Johnson County Herald, September 8, 1960, “Schools” Clippings File, Johnson County Museum, Shawnee, KS.; Interview with Franklin McFarland.Google Scholar
27 Kansas City Star, May 4, 1958, 29B. A review of real estate advertisements published in Sunday editions of the Kansas City Star, on the first two Sundays in May, was conducted for every year between 1948 and 1965. Shawnee Mission High School was mentioned in advertisements more than any other institution, typically four to six times each Sunday, although it should be noted that particular schools were named in a small proportion of hundreds of advertisements. Various SMSD elementary schools were regularly noted as well. City schools, particularly Southwest High, were mentioned also, although less frequently over time. For a similar analysis and discussion of suburban educational development, see Jack Dougherty, “Shopping for Schools: How Public Education and Private Housing Shaped Suburban Connecticut,” Journal of Urban History, 38 (March 2012): 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 “Flood of Housing Spurs a Johnson County School Push,” Kansas City Star, January 16, 1955, “Schools” Clippings File, Johnson County Museum, Shawnee, KS.Google Scholar
29 “Postwar Development in Johnson County, Kansas, Is Subject of Article in Nation's Schools Magazine: Building Problems Curriculum and Establishment of Junior High System are Discussed,” Kansas City Star, March 30, 1958. “Schools” Vertical File, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO.Google Scholar
30 “Postwar Development in Johnson County, Kansas, Is Subject of Article”; Love, , Johnson County, Kansas, 149–51.Google Scholar
31 “Two Schools Here Win Praise for Excellence,” Kansas City Times, October 11, 1957, 1; “What Makes Them Good?” Time, October 21, 1957, 54.Google Scholar
32 “Postwar Development in Johnson County, Kansas”; “Shawnee Mission Schools Broke Much New Ground”; Interview with Franklin McFarland.Google Scholar
33 “S-M District Grows to 120,000 Since ‘21” The Olathe News, May 5, 1961, “Schools” Clippings File, Johnson County Museum; Doyle, Patricia Jansen, “Shawnee Mission Northwest's New Passage to Learning,” Kansas City Star Magazine, April 18, 1971, 12; Inman, Roy, “A New Plot in the Environment Story,” Kansas City Star Magazine, May 30, 1971, 8; Love, Johnson County, Kansas, 171–75. On the area's black population and their access to education, see The Shawnee Sesquicentennial Committee, A Pictorial History of Shawnee: Celebrating Shawnee's Sesquicentennial, 1856–2006 (Lawrence, KS: Sunflower Publishing, 2006), 37–38.Google Scholar
34 “Will Johnny Learn a Lot Next Year with More Kids in His Class?” The Squire, February 5, 1970, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1970,” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library, Overland Park, KS; Mayer, , The Builders, 59–60.Google Scholar
35 Kansas State Department of Education, “Unified School District Wealth, 1975–76,” Kansas State Department of Education, Topeka, 1976, np. The taxable income per pupil in the district was $14,972, compared to $8,324 for Olathe and approximately $9,000 for Kansas City, Kansas, $11,000 for Wichita, and 13,000 for Topeka. Kansas State Department of Education, U.S.D. Report on Enrollments and General Fund Per Pupil, 1974–5 (Topeka, KS: Kansas State Department of Education, 1975), 18.Google Scholar
36 “School Staffs in Good Shape,” Kansas City Times, July 15, 1961, 1.Google Scholar
37 “Conservative Attitude Works as a Brake,” Kansas City Times, September 16, 1967, 2B. The series was written by the Star's Education writer, Patricia Jansen Doyle, who also wrote about other districts in the metropolitan area. She raised a number of questions about whether the district's schools deserved their excellent reputation, noting that the district actually spent less per pupil than some other area school systems, and that some students complained that they had not been well prepared for college. Even if there was little question that Shawnee Mission was widely seen as the best district in the region, Doyle suggested that perhaps it was due of the high socioeconomic status of its clientele rather than the work of the schools. See “Both Facts, Fancy in Education Reputation,” Kansas City Star: This Week Magazine, September 10, 1967, 1A, 10A.Google Scholar
38 “Kansans Face Vast School Change,” Kansas City Star, May 25, 1964, 4.Google Scholar
39 Husain, Ghazal A., “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas,” (PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 1966), 108; “School Consolidation History,” Memorandum from Lauren S. Douglas to Senator Chris Steineger; Kansas Legislative Research Department, Topeka, KS, November 2, 2009 (available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/26316131/Kansas-School-Consolidation-History). Also see “Finance Plan Keyed to Unification,” Kansas City Star, May 28, 1964, 4; “Spur to Approval of a School Plan,” Kansas City Times, May 29, 1964, 3; “Pros and Cons of School Unification,” Kansas City Star, May 29, 1964, 4; “Hoping to End School ‘Maze',” Kansas City Star, May 31, 1964, 22.Google Scholar
40 On this point, see Steffes, Tracy L., “Solving the Rural School Problem: New State Aid, Standards, and Supervision of Local Schools, 1900–1933,” History of Education Quarterly 48 (Spring 2008): 181–220, and Reynolds, David R., There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth Century Iowa (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1999), passim. On early conditions in Kansas, see Fairchild, E.T., Bulletin of Information Regarding Consolidation of Rural Schools (Topeka, KS: State Print Office, 1908), passim.Google Scholar
41 “A Study of the Public Schools of the Shawnee Mission District of Johnson County Kansas,” (March 1962, Shawnee Mission, Kansas), 30.Google Scholar
42 “Complex Issues in Unification Vote,” Kansas City Star, May 27, 1964, 4A; “Push Approval of Unification,” Kansas City Star, June 1, 1964, 4; “Johnson County Delays the Inevitable,” Kansas City Star, August 19, 1964 (Johnson County Library Clippings File).Google Scholar
43 “Another Blow to Unification,” Kansas City Times, May 28, 1964, 4A; “The Best School Plan for Johnson County,” Kansas City Star, June 1, 1964, 24; Complex Issues in Unification Vote, 4A.Google Scholar
44 “Reject a School Plan,” Kansas City Times, June 3, 1964, 4; “Complex Issues in Unification Vote,” 4A. One local history suggests that the residents of affluent Westwood were solidly opposed to the unification plan; see Gene Culbertson, The City of Westwood: Celebrating 50 Years of Progress, 1949–1999 (Shawnee, KS: Publishing Specialist Inc.), 25.Google Scholar
45 “‘Stride in School Vote”’ Kansas City Star, June 3, 1964, 4A.Google Scholar
46 “Kill a Merger: Mission-Roeland Park Consolidation Plan Loses Overwhelmingly in Election,” Kansas City Star, September 27, 1953, 3A; “Vote on Merger Issue: Long and Sometimes Bitter Controversy over the Merger of Mission and Roeland Park,” Kansas City Star, September 25, 1953, 14.Google Scholar
47 “Against a Merger,” Kansas City Star, December 1, 1965, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1965,” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library, Overland Park, KS; “Plan Lengthy Bill Schedule: Move to Consolidate Johnson County Programs Will Await a Survey,” Kansas City Star, January 3, 1957, 15. Interestingly, the straw vote was positive in this case, although it did not result immediately in consolidation. See “A Johnson County Tangle,” 38. Mission Woods was (is) a very small Nichols development immediately to the north of Mission Hills, on the Missouri border.Google Scholar
48 Perhaps the best discussion of this can be found in the widely cited article by Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 55 (October 1964): 157–69. Regarding the impetus for modern bureaucratic control of government services, Hays notes, “the source of support for reform in municipal government did not come from the lower or middle classes, but from the upper class. The leading business groups in each city and professional men closely allied with them initiated and dominated municipal movements” (159).Google Scholar
49 See Tyack, , The One Best System, Part IV.Google Scholar
50 These points are taken from Husain, “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas,” summarized in Chapter V, A geographer, he conducted a statistical analysis of unification across all counties in the state, utilizing multiple regression. Controlling for half a dozen other factors, including tax levels, farm products and school costs, he found that the number of school districts was the strongest predictor of the rate of consolidation leading up to 1964 (98). This logic did not appear to apply, of course, to Shawnee Mission in 1964, although Husain did not comment on it.Google Scholar
51 “Reject a School Plan,” 4A.Google Scholar
52 “Mixed Views on Unification,” Kansas City Times, December 4, 1968, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1968,” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Library. The quote about the danger in small boards is quite striking in light to Progressive Era measures backed by educated urban elites to drastically reduce membership on city school boards in the name of efficiency and nonpartisanship. On these points see Tyack, The One Best System, Part IV.Google Scholar
53 “School Plan Unit Studies Next Vote,” Kansas City Star, June 5, 1964, 4; “Expect a Modified Unification Plan,” Kansas City Times, June 5, 1964, 4.Google Scholar
54 “A School Unity Election Today,” Kansas City Times, September 8, 1964, 10; “Johnson County Delays the Inevitable.”Google Scholar
55 “Hails School Vote Results: Significant Step Seen Taken on Unification in Kansas,” Kansas City Star, June 3, 1964, 4A.Google Scholar
56 Husain, , “Consolidation of School Districts in Kansas,” Chapter V, “Summary and Conclusions.”Google Scholar
57 In 1968, just 29 districts in the state had yet to consolidate, and 13 of them were within the Shawnee Mission High School District attendance area. See “Outgoing Superintendent Explains Opposition to One Big District.”Google Scholar
58 “Suggest Vote on Unification,” Kansas City Times, February 13, 1968, 5; “Question Amrein on Vote Proposal,” Kansas City Times, February 20, 1968, 4.Google Scholar
59 “Patrons Wary of Unity Plan,” Kansas City Star, November 19, 1968, 4; “Official for Voluntary School District Union,” Kansas City Times, February 3, 1968, 5A; “School Dispute Ends Smoothly,” Kansas City Times, February 19, 1969, 12B.Google Scholar
60 “Editorial: Adding More Emotionalism,” The Johnson County Sun, January 8, 1969 (“Shawnee Mission Schools, 1969,” Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library, Overland Park, KS; “For One School Unit,” Kansas City Star,” February 7, 1968, 4A; “Hits Material on Unification,” Kansas City Times, February 16, 1968, 4A; “Bower Attacks Effort to Stop Shawnee Mission School Unity,” Kansas City Times, March 12, 1968, 5; “Would Delay Unity for a Year,” Kansas City Times, February 21, 1968, 4A).Google Scholar
61 Engelhardt, Engelhardt and Leggett, Inc., Unification (County, Johnson, KS: Northeast Johnson County Public Schools, 1968) passim; “Oppose Paying for Unification Study,” Kansas City Times, December 12, 1968, 5C.Google Scholar
62 “For Unified District,” Kansas City Times January 21, 1969, 4; “School Unity Bill to Floor,” Kansas City Times, January 28, 1969, 4.Google Scholar
63 “School Bill Is Passed,” Kansas City Times, February 14, 1969, 4.Google Scholar
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65 “Century of History Surrounds Closing of Linwood School,” Kansas City Star, May 9, 1975, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1975” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library; “Closings Advised in Shawnee Mission,” Kansas City Times, November 11, 1975, 4A; School Closings to Be Topic Tonight,” Johnson County Sun, November 19, 1975, 2A.Google Scholar
66 “Bill to Decentralize School District,” Kansas City Star, February 12, 1973, 4.Google Scholar
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68 Under the terms of the state's school consolidation legislation, only city districts had the power to close schools without a vote of affected patrons. Since Shawnee Mission was originally a rural high school district, it had to abide by rules governing districts serving rural areas. See “Ball for Court Action to Clarify School Issue,” Kansas City Star, March 5, 1976, 4.Google Scholar
69 “Impact of Keeping all Schools Open Studied,” Kansas City Star, February 17, 1976, 4; “School Board to Turn to Courts,” Kansas City Times, March 23, 1976, 4; “Parents Do Homework, Fight School Closings,” Kansas City Star, December 4, 1975, 2W; “Board Can't Close Schools,” Kansas City Times, February 16, 1976, “Shawnee Mission Schools, 1976,” Regional Reference Vertical File, Johnson County Public Library, Overland Park, KS; “Board to Renew Drive for School Closing Law,” Kansas City Star, February 19, 1976, 4.Google Scholar
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71 “Shawnee Mission Hopes Feuding Is Over,” Kansas City Star, November 11, 1987, 1; “The Education of Raj Chopra,” Kansas City Times, November 5, 1988, AM Profile. The 1987 vote in favor of an increased levy was just 58%, a margin of victory that would have been insufficient in Missouri, where a two-thirds majority was required for approval of such measures.Google Scholar
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75 For a description of the study, see Zimmer, Basil G. and Hawley, Amos H., Metropolitan Area Schools: Resistance to District Reorganization (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1968), Chapter 1. Zimmer and Hawley found that college educated, affluent suburbanites in larger metropolitan areas (Milwaukee and Buffalo in their study) expressed the greatest opposition to the idea of district reorganization or consolidation, favoring small, locally controlled, and financed districts over other options (see Chapter 7 for these points). On “localism,” see Hawley, Amos and Zimmer, Basil, The Metropolitan Community: Its People and Government (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1970), Chapter 4: “The Localization of Daily Life.”Google Scholar
76 Lassiter, Matthew, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), Chapter 6; McGirr, , Suburban Warriors, Chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
