Community Organizing for School Reform:
Creating the Context for Change

A Forum — December 6 and 7, 2001

In two learning events-a seminar for approximately 35 District of Columbia parents, educators and community advocates co-sponsored with DC VOICE held December 6, and a forum on Capitol Hill for over 100 U.S. government policy aides and representatives of national education and youth-serving organizations held December 7-participants were given a new way of looking at education reform: from the outside in through the lens of community organizing groups. The vehicle for learning about these groups was a new report, Mapping the Field of Organizing for School Improvement, by the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University (IESP), and its research partners, Designs for Change (Chicago), California Tomorrow, and Southern Echo (Mississippi).

The study focused on the growth of the community organizing movement and highlighted the work of 66 groups in eight sites (Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mississippi Delta, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC) that have initiated community organizing to improve schools. Though their origins have differed, each organization has evolved to embrace a specific focus on the problems of poor schools in their communities propelled by: (1) the push by local parents and youth to take action on failing schools, (2) recognition by community groups of the link between good schools and strong neighborhoods, (3) national networks and local support organizations providing support to multi-issue neighborhood groups in initiating organizing campaigns; and/or (4) targeted funding to help groups take these steps.

Kavitha Mediratta, senior project director at IESP, provided an overview of the mapping study, discussing the exponential growth of the field of school reform organizing, defining what is meant by organizing, and discussing organizing approaches reflective of local and regional contexts. Community organizing is about changing power relationships-taking collective action, focusing on concrete change in policy and practice, using democratic decision-making to drive all work, and undertaking ongoing recruitment and leadership development.

Forum participants learned of the different strategies employed by different groups. In Los Angeles, South Central Youth Empowered Through Action has flipped the focus of inner-city education issues from topics of excessive discipline and over identification of students for special education to issues of college access and achievement for community youth. In contrast to the "equity" work going on in some communities, the issue in predominantly minority communities is often more about "adequacy" or just getting up to par. In the Mississippi Delta, community organizing is essentially about completing the work begun during the civil rights movement.

According to Nsombi Lambright, resource person for fundraising and communications at Southern Echo, when desegregation came to the Delta, there was white flight to the private schools and general withdrawal of public support to the public schools. Years later, these schools continue to be seriously under resourced. Greater than 90 percent of the students are African American, most living in poverty, and there is a 25-30 percent dropout rate. Public investments have gone to build 20 new prisons while the schools face critical teacher shortages and limited curriculum offerings (especially advanced courses). Students often must wait until junior or senior year to take Algebra. One of the major problems faced is the criminalization of students through laws labeling them as "continuously disruptive" and "habitually disruptive." The result is structured pathways for many young people from schools directly into the prisons. "Prison Prep" is what students often call their schools. In 1990, Southern Echo organized to develop a cadre of leaders in communities, providing training and technical assistance. Most of these groups have identified education as a priority-the "key to unlocking other rights and benefits."

According to Anne Henderson, coauthor of Urgent Message: Families Crucial to School Reform, and author of the study's site report on Washington, DC, public education doesn't work well in communities where the adults in schools don't feel accountable to the children in schools. Through community organizing, "Parents and communities are designing their own approaches and raising tough questions about why students are failing." She views this as a healthy sign of democracy at work-developing the political will to ensure resources and positive educational outcomes for all students.

National organizing networks such as ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation, the Pacific Institute for Community Organizing (PICO), and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), as well as existing community groups moving into organizing, are focusing schools on critical issues of teaching and learning. They also are building support for key interventions, and establishing new and stronger accountability relationships between schools and communities. In addition, they increase the ability of young people, parents and community residents to take part in local reform efforts - and to raise essential questions about school performance forcefully and persistently.

Norm Fruchter, director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy and Clinical Professor of Education Policy at New York University, concluded the forum with recommendations, many addressed to the funding community, stressing the need for greater support to organizing groups to build their capacity to conduct research, produce data and reports on issues of concern, and train community members; and the importance of documenting the work of community organizing work. He cited the limits to using community organizing as a lever for impacting policy and practice in the schools, because it is often difficult for external groups to get into the schools and changing many of the core processes of institutions must come from within.

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