In communities across the U.S., young people have returned to the classroom for the start of a new school year. However, for the individuals and organizations working to bring about change in the nation’s educational systems, there was no summer break.
Parents, community members, schoolteachers and administrators around the country continued to partner with advocacy and school reform groups to call for improvements in the educational settings and curriculums available to urban youth, particularly to students of color and those living in low-income neighborhoods.
Establishing and strengthening such relationships has been a key goal of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, a Mott grantee. Mott has made more than $24 million in grants since 1990 for community-driven school reform initiatives via the Pathways Out of Poverty program.
Cross City, founded in 1993, is a national network of school reform leaders advocating for policies and practices that move educational authority, resources, and accountability to the school level; reconnect schools with their communities; and rethink the role of school districts in educational systems.
Chris Brown, Cross City’s director of Schools and Community, notes that members’ efforts to bring communities and education staff together around such issues has been critical to reforms taking place in several districts. Among them:
- Oakland Community Organizations-- also a Mott grantee -- worked with members of this California community to secure a “small schools” policy, resulting in the creation of several elementary and high schools featuring low student-to-teacher ratios. Studies indicate that such environments can have significantly positive impacts on students’ educational experience and outcomes.
- Residents and advocacy groups joined Texas-based Austin Interfaith -- a chapter of the Industrial Areas Foundation, both Mott grantees -- in creating a local network of Alliance Schools, bringing a number of key resources, such as afterschool programs, to low-income neighborhoods. The Alliance Schools initiative continues to demonstrate significant success in closing achievement gaps affecting underserved youth.
- In New York City, the local chapter of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) -- a Mott grantee -- brought parents and community members together to successfully call for the creation of three high schools designed to meet the individual academic and social needs of area low-income youth and their families.
- Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) in Chicago worked with parents, teachers, principals and community members to win the construction of two new middle schools and five school annexes to help relieve classroom overcrowding. LSNA has also helped spur the creation of a number of local afterschool initiatives and significant increases in student completion of “GED” high school equivalency programs.
Brown notes that the activities and actions that led to such reforms demonstrate that network members remain focused on the "community" aspect of organizing.
"They have created opportunities for the authentic voices of these low-income parents to be a part of the conversation on school reform, to insure that the conversation isn’t taking place behind closed doors or being dominated by politicians or academics. Instead, it’s the dialogue of parents and community members who are taking an active role in the decision making process and establishing the will and the clout to establish very real change."
Cross City provides numerous resources to its members and the organizing community, including training and technical assistance on issues of school reform; workshops and conferences for organizers to meet with peers and discuss successes, challenges and strategies; dissemination of research targeting reform-related topics; and site visits to various schools and educational systems so that organizers can learn first-hand from the stories of parents, students and communities.
Other activities include tracking the federal No Child Left Behind Act and exploring how the organizing opportunities inherent in the legislation can strengthen public engagement and teacher quality. Cross City staff are also completing research on how school administration policies and practices help or hinder efforts improve classroom instruction, and how individual districts can improve their effectiveness.
Anne Hallett, Cross City executive director, further points to a new organizational priority of supporting youth organizing on reform issues, particularly in the redesign of high school curriculums. She also notes that Cross City will continue to identify new strategies to help parents, community members and school personnel remain active, involved and interested in working on school reform issues.
"School reform can’t, shouldn’t and won’t happen without the involvement of parents, students and community organizations. They are the lifeblood of this movement and it is their dedication that makes true reform a reality."
Additional Resources
- "Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools," a report of the Indicators Project on Education Organizing (an initiative of Cross City Campaign and Research for Action), examines how community organizing among network members –including ACORN, Austin Interfaith and Oakland Community Organizations -- contributes to the improvement of public education and the strengthening of low-income communities.
- The Small Schools Workshop is a group of educators, organizers and researchers collaborating with teachers, principals and parents in the creation and support of small, innovative public schools.
- A look at Mott-supported efforts to engage parents and community members in calling for school reforms was featured in the December 2002 issue of Mott Mosaic.
- Click here to read about the insights into community-driven school reform discovered by representatives from the fields of education and philanthropy during site visits in 2002 to schools in Texas and California.
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