Building and Sustaining Education Reform through Relational Power
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The success of community organizing is rooted in the
idea of relational power – power developed collaboratively with others,
rather than power over others.
Recently, a new set of education advocacy groups
that define themselves as a children’s and parents’ lobby has attracted
attention by their involvement in debates and activity focused on
teacher tenure and evaluation, charter schools, parent “triggers,”
school funding, and a host of other issues. While these groups claim to
represent the interests of parents, especially those who’ve been poorly
served by public schools, their engagement of parents and community
members is often limited to signing petitions, joining a website, and
attending occasional large events. Rather than working with parents and
students to identify their most pressing concerns and develop solutions
together, these groups promote agendas shaped largely by political
insiders.
These newer groups have garnered
considerable media attention for tapping into families’ disaffection
with current school realities. But another set of organizations across
the country has been working for decades to build meaningful,
sustainable avenues for parents, families, and community members to
improve and enrich local public schools through community organizing.
Organizing starts from the proposition that those most directly impacted
by a problem are in the best position to solve it. By developing their
own leadership skills and knowledge and acting collectively to alter the
power dynamics that perpetuate inequities in opportunity, the
communities that have been least well-served by our education system can
generate real change in their local schools.
This
long-term work helps community organizing groups build the power to
demand and win changes that genuinely represent families’ and
communities’ interests. Organizing groups often describe this as
“relational power” – power developed collaboratively with others, rather than power over others.
Parent- and community-led organizing groups across the country have
used relational power as the basis for collective actions to win major
new resources and more equitable district and school practices.
For example, Teach Our Children,
a parent organizing group in New Haven, Connecticut, has won
improvements to the New Haven public schools discipline policy and
expanded access to translation services. The congregation-based
organizations that make up the Massachusetts Communities Action Network (MCAN)
have won improved access to after-school programs and English as a
Second Language services and have developed programs to improve
family-school partnerships, including a successful home visit program in
Springfield.
In New York City, two education organizing collaboratives supported by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) – the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) and the Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC)
– have built durable power, enabling parents and students in
communities of color to influence education policy citywide. CEJ and UYC
have won major investments in the city’s lowest-performing middle
schools, academic intervention services for struggling students, Student
Success Centers to help high school students prepare for college, and
more equitable and responsive school discipline practices.
All
of these groups’ successes rest on a foundation of relationship
building, careful work to develop shared leadership, and deep roots in
local communities. Teach Our Children reaches out to families by
knocking on doors and reaching out at school pick-up and drop-off sites,
community centers, and parks, making a particular effort to engage
parents who don’t participate in PTAs and other more traditional
avenues. MCAN’s affiliates – made up of religious congregations,
community development corporations, and unions – draw on the
longstanding relationships and trust present in those member
organizations. Through the one-on-one conversations and small group
meetings that are staples of community organizing, parents and community
members develop relationships with each other and begin to identify
shared concerns and problems.
Outreach and
relationship building are constant features of organizing as groups work
to expand their base of parents, students, and community members and
ensure that the issues their members have identified resonate broadly.
Organizing is guided by the “iron rule”: Never do for others what they
can do for themselves. Rather than leading the work themselves,
community organizers help develop members’ leadership skills, engaging
them right away in making decisions, facilitating meetings, doing
research, and meeting with public officials. Veteran leaders take
responsibility for engaging new members and supporting their leadership
development. In order to develop workable solutions to local issues,
leaders learn how the education system works, conduct research on
education policies and practices, and explore issues with educators and
experts.
In this way, the work of community
organizing is carried out by those with the most at stake. Organizing is
not a glamorous process – it rarely attracts national media attention
or investments by billionaire philanthropists. But careful organizing
builds an agenda for education reform that resonates deeply with
parents, students, and community members because demands are drawn
directly from their own experience with local schools and their research
and insights on solutions. Most importantly, the deep roots and thick
webs of relationships built through community organizing translate into
social capital that lasts well beyond specific campaigns. Organizing
develops broad and long-term community capacity to press for change and
to hold public institutions accountable for implementing change
equitably and sustainably.
Interested in learning more about building and sustaining strong education organizing? Check out AISR’s recent webinar: Getting Started in Education Organizing.| ANNENBERG INSTITUTE SUPPORT FOR EDUCATION ORGANIZING Based on the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s work to support CEJ, UYC, and other education organizing work across the country, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) has partnered with AISR to support nascent community organizing efforts in five New England school districts. NMEF has made major investments in student-centered learning reforms in these districts: Burlington and Winooski, Vermont, Portland, Maine, Sanford, Maine, and Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Recognizing the potential of authentic community engagement to strengthen and sustain education reforms, NMEF is investing in developing the long-term capacity of families and communities to act collectively to improve schooling. |
FURTHER RESOURCES:
Mediratta, K., S. Shah, and S. McAlister. 2009. Community Organizing for Stronger Schools: Strategies and Successes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Skinner, E. A., M. T. Garretón, and B. D. Schultz (eds.). 2011. Grow Your Own Teachers: Grassroots Change for Teacher Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Warren, M. 2001. Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Warren, M., and K. Mapp. 2011. A Match on Dry Grass and the Community Organizing and School Reform Project. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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