Struggling for educational equity in diverse communities: School reform as social movement (original) (raw)
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The Agony of School Reform: Race, Class, and the Elusive Search for Social Justice
Educational Researcher, 2003
litical commitments of its change proponents. Some of these commitments provide the backdrop for the ideological interests that subvert social justice in education. Education and Democratic Theory and The Color School Reform provide a good pair for undertaking a critical study of school reform. They share common characteristics. First, both books represent an interdisciplinary approach to school reform. Fields is an emeritus professor of political science working with a philosopher of education, Feinberg. Henig et al. are political science scholars concerned with urban school reform (see also Henig, 2001; Stone et al., 2001). These collaborations suggest that research on educational change that cuts across traditional boundaries strengthens scholars’ ability to research persistent problems through intellectual partnerships. Second, both books represent empirical studies that are theoretically grounded. The first is an ethnographic analysis of a site-based reform in Ed City, with the authors engaging models of democracy from Rousseau to Sartre; the second is an ambitious study of the impact of reform on race relations in four Black-led cities—Washington, DC, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit—mobilizing a framework they call “civic capacity.” Contrary to what researchers may expect, the fact that Blacks have reached positions of city leadership is not by itself sufficient to raise the educational achievement of Black students. Third, as already mentioned, both books confront the political aspects of reform, what I have called its ideological dimensions. I will review the books thematically. This review integrates them under the themes they share with respect to the centrality of power and ideology in education.
Abstract Educational leaders attempting to enact equity-focused change in their schools are frequently met with fierce opposition by politically powerful parents whose children are well served by the status quo. The purpose of this conceptual article is to: (a) explore the utility of Critical Race Theory as a framework for helping K-12 school leaders anticipate and make sense of resistance to change efforts aimed at creating greater educational equity for underserved students, and (b) suggest ways that school leaders can more effectively engage in equity reforms in their schools. To do this, we examine a highly contested public debate over a recent equity-focused change effort at Berkeley High School (BHS)—a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse public school in Northern California. Using the events at BHS as an example, we argue that change efforts could be undertaken more effectively by: (a) identifying and addressing the underlying property interests up front, (b) anticipating how majoritarian narratives rooted in ‘‘colorblindness’’ and deficit thinking would be employed as a means for obscuring and maintaining unequal access to scarce resources, and (c) focusing on specific areas of interest convergence.
School Norms and Reforms, Critical Race Theory, and the Fairytale of Equitable Education
Critical Questions in Education, 2016
In this paper, I utilize three tenets of Critical Race Theory in education—racism is normal, whiteness as property, and interest convergence—to illuminate the overt and covert ways racial inequity is preserved in the contemporary climate of public schooling and corpora-tized education reform efforts, as well as the particularly troubling situation wherein communities of color have repeatedly been promised educational improvement and enrichment , but have rarely received it. I then attempt to connect what is with what might be, using Derrick Bell's theory of racial realism as a tool for understanding the very potent reality of this situation and how students, parents, educators, communities, activists and scholars can and do confront this reality as a form of empowerment in itself, and as such, can enact change.
Berkeley Review of Education
This paper draws on the concepts of settled expectations and the educational racial contract to provide an analysis of the current social movements calling for the improvement of teacher salaries and work conditions in K-12 schools. This paper argues that some teacher unions' lack of centering race in their advocacy to ameliorate educational inequities will not radically transform how teachers are treated in the profession, unless there is an increase in motivation to fully recognize the humanity and educational needs of Students of Color in American society. The author calls for teacher activists to reject the false consciousness of their own settled expectations and work on equal footing with Communities of Color to co-author an emancipatory educational contract on the basis of relational equity, respect, and sympathetic touch.
The Elephant in the Living Room: Racism in School Reform
1999
When serving economically disenfranchised African American children, school systems often unconsciously respond from a racist and class biased paradigm. Teachers often unconsciously operate from a framework of low expectations for these students' success. Society often supports the notion of students getting by with less because less is all the schools believe they can do. The Urban Atlanta Coalition Compact (UACC) is one current reform effort. As researchers engage with UACC schools that are struggling with ways to create better learning environments for African American children, they have observed that racism is a significant factor in the failure of schools to meet these students' academic needs. A 1997-99 research effort explored what could be done as a collaboration of schools and universities to remedy this situation. This paper discusses the early manifestations of racism encountered in the formation of the UACC project during its planning meetings with the steering committee, the boards of education, school leaders, parents, and other parties. Because of these experiences, part of the research was driven by the question of whether the prejudices, stereotypes, and misconceptions of well-intentioned educators sabotage educational reform efforts. The paper also explores reasons for the resistance of mainstream educators to discuss the impact of racist politics, economics, and educational theory on the school's capacity to teach all children. (Contains 33 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. S
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2017
Educational equity dominates discussions of US schooling. However, what 'educational equity' means is much contested in the scholarly literature and in public discourses. We follow the lead of scholars of color who have problematized the definition of educational equity. They have shown that the dominant, taken-for-granted definitions of equity which disguises the accumulation of societal and educational exclusions of and prejudices toward historically marginalized students, their families, and their communities. In response to this critique, we offer a new definitional framework for 'educational equity' that is community-based and, in our specific case, urban communitybased. And, then, we will apply this new equity framework to three examples or 'exemplars' of education reform to explicate how they do and do not illustrate our framework. We will finish with a brief discussion, recommendations for future scholarship, and some concluding remarks.
Experiencing Imminent Justice: The Presence of Hope in a Movement for Equitable Schooling
Recent scholarship on the affective dimensions of social change has pointed toward hope as an ethically promising form of belonging. In this article, the articulation of hope in the context of a reform-oriented social movement provides the basis for interrogating the political promise of hope. The author examines the ascent of a movement for small, equitable schools in Oakland, California, to explore the hopes and aspirations of its most ardent advocates. To do this, the author contrasts the movement’s assertion of its equity-centered strategy with the complex race and class hierarchies that grounded power relations within the movement. The question that emerges from this discontinuity is how reformers come to experience the movement as equitable and unequivocally progressive. The author finds that the gap between reformers’ ideals and their material circumstances is bridged by the movement’s ample production of hope.
2002
This report examines the work of 66 community groups organizing to improve public education in low-performing schools and districts. These largely local, community-based organizations focus on engaging public school parents, low-income faMilies, and students in school improvement efforts. Their goals are to build political power and to challenge school systems that serve children poorly. This report describes the diversity of methods and approaches groups are using and reports groups' Organizing achievements and challenges. Results find that school reform organizing plays a significant role in creating the political context in which change can happen. Organizing groups focus schools on critical issues, identify and build support for key interventions, and establish a stronger sense of accountability between schools and communities. They are increasing the ability of young people, parents, and community residents to participate in local reform efforts, and they are helping members to raise essential school performance questions forcefully and persistently. The report discusses implications for educators and offers recommendations for funders (e.g., the need to develop greater capacity in the organizing groups, create and strengthen intermediary or "support" organizations that provide technical help such as data analysis, and develop better ways to measure the impact of organizing). An appendix describes the methodology used and includes contact information for the organizations profiled in the study. (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Our Separate Struggles are Really One: Building Political Race Coalitions for Educational Justice
Leadership and Policy in Schools, 2019
In this article, we explore political race theory as a framework for building coalitions between Black and Brown communities as part of a shared struggle for educational justice and community power amid neoliberal reform. Inspired by the Black and Brown alliances for economic justice of the 1960s and 1970s and informed by previous scholarship on the conceptualization of political race and the lived experience of being raced in America and its relationship to power, we draw from the experiential knowledge of African American and Mexican American superintendents to better understand how they interpreted and navigated the politics of race as school district leaders in their advocacy for students raced black or brown. We then discuss how political race, and the racialization of power in schools requires more theorizing in education leadership research and provide examples of how the field can deepen future analyses by recasting educational inequality as a political problem rather than instructional or cultural and valuing the experiential knowledge of those who have been raced.