DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 469 250 UD 035 291

AUTHOR Gold, Eva; Simon, Elaine; Brown, Chris

TITLE Successful Community Organizing for School Reform. StrongNeighborhoods, Strong Schools. The Indicators Project onEducation Organizing.

INSTITUTION Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, Chicago, IL.;Research for Action, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

SPONS AGENCY BellSouth Foundation, Inc. Atlanta, GA.; Annie E. CaseyFoundation, Baltimore, MD.; Edna McConnell Clark Foundation,New York, NY.; Ford Foundation, New York, NY.; Mott (C.S.)Foundation, Flint, MI.; Rockefeller Foundation, New York,NY.; William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia, PA.; NeedmorFund, Toledo, OH.; Edward W. Hazen Foundation, Inc., NewHaven, CT.

PUB DATE 2002-03-00NOTE 72p.; A seven-page executive summary is appended. For other

reports from the Indicators Project on Education, see UD 035292-298. Photographs may not reproduce well.

AVAILABLE FROM Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, 407 SouthDearborn, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60605 ($20). Tel: 312 -322-4880; Fax: 312-322-4885; Web site: http://www.crosscity.org.

PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141)

EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.

DESCRIPTORS Accountability; After School Programs; Case Studies;*Community Organizations; *Educational Change; ElementarySecondary Education; Equal Education; Leadership Training;*Neighborhood Schools; *Parent Participation; Public Schools;*School Community Relationship; Urban Schools

IDENTIFIERS California (Oakland); Illinois (Chicago); New York (NewYork); Pennsylvania (Philadelphia); *Reform Efforts; Texas(Austin)

ABSTRACT

The Indicators Project on Education Organizing was designedto examine the role of community organizing in school reform. For over 2years, researchers documented the education organizing of five urban groups.This report presents an education organizing indicators framework thathighlights strategies and accomplishments of education organizing. Itdescribes eight indicator areas: leadership development, community power,social capital, public accountability, equity, school-community connection,positive school climate, and high quality curriculum and instruction. It alsodescribes a theory of change that shows how the work of community organizinggroups creates a process that leads from increased community capacity toimproved student learning. Seven chapters are (1) "Introduction"; (2) "TheProblem and What You Will Learn"; (3) "The Education Organizing IndicatorsFramework"; (4) "The Change Process"; (5) "Making Sense of the Variation inCommunity Organizing"; (6) "The Added Value of Community Organizing to SchoolReform"; and (7) "Challenges and Recommendations for Extending and Supportingthe Work of Community Organizing." Five appendices present the five casestudy groups, a map showing locations of community organizing groups, chartsshowing characteristics of the 19 telephone survey groups, the IndicatorsProject National Advisory Board, and the education organizing indicatorsframework. (SM)

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Successful Community Organizingfor School Reform

Prepared by

RESEARCH FOR ACTIONEva Gold and Elaine Simon

with

CROSS CITY CAMPAIGN FOR URBAN SCHOOL REFORMChris Brown

COPYRIGHT MARCH 2002

Stro n_Strong Schools

The Indicators Project on Education Organizing

3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to both staff and leaders of the five case

study groups for sharing with us the work of commu-

nity organizing for school reform and for introducing

us to their partners and others in their cities familiar

with their efforts. We also want to express appreciationto the participants in the telephone surveyexecutive

directors and otherswho patiently answered ourmany questions about education organizing.

The Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform

initiated this project and numerous Cross City staffhave contributed to this study. Anne Hallett conceivedthe project and led the planning committee. She and

Lupe Prieto went on several site visits and have read

and commented on drafts of reports. Cross Cityinterns Jessica Tai, Jodi Newman, Brianne Testa, and

Kelly Hallberg gathered information for the data baseof community organizing groups, and David Hayes

provided the technical know-how to set it up on theCross City website. Muriel Jackson, Joanne Cloonan,and Eva Moon have provided critical editing support.

Many from Research for Action also have contributedto this study. Sukey Blanc and Marcine Pickeron-Davis

have been site leaders and site report authors. Rob

Ballenger, Matthew Goldwasser, Aida Nevarez-LaTorre, Rachel Martin, and Hitomi Yoshida assistedwith data collection and participated in analysis and/orprovided technical assistance. We benefited as \veil

from the contributions of summer research interns Kate

Christman and Kelly \Vissman. Rachel Mausner and

Judy Adamson have provided invaluable editing sup-

port. We also want to thank Michael B. Katz. who is a

member of the Research for Action Board of Directors,for his comments on a late draft of the report.

We also want to acknowledge the invaluable inputof the Indicators Project Advisory Group, whose

members appear in Appendix D. They have read draftreports and traveled long distances to discuss themwith us, helping to think through knotty issues raisedby the search for credible indicators.

We also acknowledge the generous support of thefollowing foundations:

BELLSOUTH FOUNDATION

ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION

EDNA MCCONNELL CLARK FOUNDATION

FORD FOUNDATION

EDWARD W. HAZEN FOUNDATION

CHARLES STEWART MOTT FOUNDATION

NEEDMOR FUND

WILLIAM PENN FOUNDATION

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

For additional copies of this publication, contact:

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform407 South Dearborn, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60605Telephone: 312.322.4880 Fax: 312.322.4885www.crosscity.org,

Table of Contents

Forward

I. Introduction

11. The Problem and What You Will Learn

III. The Education Organizing

Indicators Framework

IV The Change Process

4

7

9

12

15

V. Making Sense of the Variation in

Community Organizing 23

VI. The Added Value of Community Organizing

to School Reform 31

VII. Challenges and Recommendations

for Extending and Supporting the Work of

Community Organizing 36

App_endix_A

The Five Case Study Groups 41

AppenciiiMap Showing Locations of

Community Organizing Groups 46

Appendix C

Charts Showing the Characteristics of the

19 Telephone Survey Groups 47

Appendix D

The Indicators Project National Advisory Board 49

Appendix F

The Education Organizing Indicators Framework 50

About the Authors 60

Contact Information 60

5

4

Forward

Many educators say that they cannot do the work of educating children alone, particularlylow- and moderate-income children and children of color. Unfortunately, there are fewmechanisms that allow parents and community members in low-income neighborhoodsto play a meaningful role in the education of their children. For many people involved ineducation, parent participation is not seen as important or meaningful. As Lucy Ruiz,a parent and an organizer with the Alliance Organizing Project in Philadelphia put it,"Parents are seen as the pretzel sellers." The common viewpoint is that parents are seenas the people who drop their kids off at school, conduct fundraisers, and occasionallyvolunteer time in a classroom. Community organizing seeks to change that dynamic.

The Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform is a nine-city network of schoolreform leaders working to transform public education to ensure that it serves all children

and prepares them to be citizens, earners, and life-long learners. While the members of the

Cross City Campaign approach the work of school reform from many different perspec-

tives, their experience has shown them that organized parents and community members

are essential to the reform process. At base, organizing brings together a group of people

who are concerned about an issue and mobilizes them to take action. Organizing is about

building power for people who are powerless and whose lives are negatively impacted

by the decisions of others. Although the Cross City Campaign believes in the importanceof organized parents and community in the school change process, the challenge is to

make a persuasive case for the impact of this kind of involvement.

The Indicators Project on Education Organizing was designed to make such a case for the

roles and results of community organizing in reforming schools and in improving student

learning. In the fall of 1997, the Cross City Campaign convened a meeting called Building

Bridges (a published report on this meeting is available from the Cross City Campaign).

The goal of the meeting was to build connections between organizers and funders around

school change. Meeting participants agreed that organizing contributed in significant ways

to improving schools and children's learning, but there was much debate about whether it

was possible to measure the contribution of organizing. A small group of organizers and

funders formed a planning group to explore the possibility of developing credible ways to

document the impact of community organizing on education. We wanted to know what

indicates that education organizing is making a difference. We also wanted to know what

support community organizations needed to continue and expand their work. This project

enabled us to examine the value:

Community organizing is essential to initiate, develop,

and sustain long-term, dynamic school reform.

That is how the Indicators Project was born.

The Cross City Campaign issued a request for proposals and selected as its research

partner Research for Action (RFA), a Philadelphia-based, non-profit research organization

specializing in education and parent involvement issues (more information on both organ-

izations is on page 60). RFA has a long history of engaging in action research and is well

known for its participatory approach to research.

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6

In collaboration with Cross City Campaign and with the participating community organi-zations, Research for Action developed and implemented a plan to look for indicators ofthe contribution of community organizing to school reform. This work documents howorganized groups of people acting collectively bring about significant change at the localschool, the community, the district, and the state. It has resulted in the development of anEducation Organizing Indicators Framework that funders, educators, and organizersthemselves can use.

The framework will help funders to understand the ways communities organize to improvetheir local schools. It can help integrate the usually separate work of the communityorganizing/development and education "wings" within a foundation. For communityorganizers, parents, and community leaders the framework will help to legitimize andstrengthen their work and connect them with successful models from which they can learn.Educators will understand the roles that community organizing groups play in advocatingfor and supporting school reform.

In addition to the research, the Indicators Project contains other elements as well. Duringthe project, organizers and leaders from each of the participating organizations visitedeach other's sites to get a better sense of how different groups were approaching the field.The Cross City Campaign has convened several meetings over the course of the project tobring together organizers, parents, community members, funders, educators, and othersto discuss the work of education organizing and make plans to move the work forward.As a result of the research and the opportunity for participating organizations to reflect ontheir work, the Cross City Campaign believes that the Indicators Project has the power tochange forever the way people view parent participation. ANNE C HALI ETT AND CHRIS RROWR

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I. Introduction

The Logan Square Neighborhood Association(LSNA), a 40-year old community organization,turned its attention to education in 1988, when theChicago School Reform Act opened up the opportu-nity for increased parent and community involvementin local schools. A few years later, LSNA membersbegan a campaign for new facilities to relieve schoolovercrowding. Their efforts have resulted, to date, inthe construction of five elementary school annexesand two middle schools. In the course of the cam-paigns for new schools, LSNA developed strongrelationships with principals and teachers that ledthem to collaborate in the development of theParent Mentor program.

The Parent Mentor program has trained over840 parents in leadership skills and brought theminto classrooms where they provide extra socialand academic help to children. Teachers have cometo appreciate the participation of parents in theclassroom for a variety of reasons, including moreindividualized student attention, better parent-teacher communication, and new insights into theLogan Square neighborhood. With the increasedpresence of parents in schools, school climatesare becoming more orderly and respectful. Parentstrained as mentors are playing a major role in aneighborhood-wide literacy initiative. In the lastfive years, all LSNA elementary schools haveexperienced significant increases in student achieve-ment. Teachers, principals, and parents credit theParent Mentor program for the gains. In addition,Parent Mentor graduates have been key actors indeveloping family-focused community centers atLSNA schools and in leading the fight againstgentrification and maintaining Logan Square asa mixed-income neighborhood.

Across the country, community organizing groupslike LSNA are working in low- to moderate-incomecommunities, turning their attention to improvingpublic education for their constituents. They work atthe neighborhood and policy levels to address therange of issues urban public schools facesuch asovercrowding, deteriorating facilities, inadequatefunding, high turnover of staff, lack of up-to-datetextbooks, and children who perform below gradelevel. Students attending these schools too often are

9

shut out of high quality programs, discouragedfrom going to college, and shortchanged in theiremployment opportunities.

In the decade that community organizing for schoolreform has taken hold and spread, community groupshave begun to address these issues and to see theirefforts pay off. For more than two years, a partner-ship of the Cross City Campaign for Urban SchoolReform and Research for Action documented theeducation organizing activities of five groups fromacross the country: the Alliance Organizing Project(Philadelphia, PA); Austin Interfaith (Austin, TX);Logan Square Neighborhood Association (Chicago,IL); New York ACORN (New York, NY); andOakland Community Organizations (Oakland, CA).(See Appendix A for a brief description of eachgroup.) Our purpose was to develop a way to showthe accomplishments of community organizing andexplain how their accomplishments lead to improvingschools and student achievement. Detailed casestudies are available on these sites in a companionvolume to this report.

In this report, we provide a methodology for under-standing the contributions of community organizingto school reform. We present an Education OrganizingIndicators Framework that identifies the strategiesand accomplishments of education organizing and aTheory of Change that describes how the work ofcommunity organizing groups creates a process thatleads from increased community capacity to improvedstudent learning. We show that when school reformgoes hand-in-hand with building strong communities,the institution of schooling itself changes fundamen-tally, increasing the chances that reform efforts will becarried out and sustained.

Our examination of the groups in this study revealedthat their efforts are bringing new resources to schoolswith the highest need, improving school climate, andcreating better conditions for teaching and learning.Nonetheless, within the discourse of school reform,their accomplishments remain largely unacknowledged,while the families in these low-income communitiescontinue to be characterized as lacking in the skillsand values necessary to support their children's educa-tion. It is the discourse of deficit that this researchchallenges. When school staff, parents, and commu-nity engage in a democratic decision-making process,

7

they develop a sense of joint ownership of localschools. Our research also shows the value of voicesexternal to schools and school systems in creating thepolitical will necessary for them to change. Whenteachers value the knowledge parents and communitymembers bring to children's learning, they can designchallenging and sensitive curriculum. In this report,we show that community organizing is an effectivevehicle for building community capacity and plays acritical role in school reform.

"How come because we live in a lower income

neighborhood do we have to get less? Our

children have to drink out of lead fountains;

our kids got to play in dirt. We don't have

music lessons; we don't get gym until the

second half of the year. But if you travel up

the road to one of these prestigious schools,

their kids [have these things]. But not mine."

PARFNT LEADER., AOP, PHILADELPHIA

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE

FIVE GROUPS

Austin Interfaith and OCO have redirected city bondsto benefit schools in low-income neighborhoods. InOakland, a $300 million bond issue is now contributingto construction of new small schools.

AOP, Austin Interfaith, LSNA, New York ACORN, andOCO obtained district and/or city allocations for facilityimprovements and/or after-school programs thatprovide academic enrichment. Austin Interfaith wasinstrumental in gaining funds to establish after-schoolprograms in 28 schools.

LSNA, New York ACORN, and OCO have leveragedfunding to build new schools and facilities in over-crowded districts. LSNA organizing won five new annexesat elementary schools and two new middle schools andNew York ACORN has opened three new high schools.

AOP and Austin Interfaith have increased school safetyby obtaining more crossing guards, better lighting, andimproved traffic patterns in school areas. AOP won anincrease in funding for 37 additional traffic guards.

Austin Interfaith has negotiated district policies that openaccess for low-income students to challenging academicprograms and bilingual instruction.

Austin Interfaith, LSNA, New York ACORN, and OCOhave sponsored new kinds of professional developmentfor teachers and principals, including visits to otherschools with parents to observe innovative programs,in-service training driven by the needs of teachers andprincipals, home-visit training, and workshops withparents to design schools and/or curriculum.

AOP, Austin Interfaith, LSNA, New York ACORN, and OCOhave increased the presence of parents in schools and theroles parents are playing, making parent-professionalexchange and collaboration a reality.

AOP, New York ACORN, and OCO have worked forsmaller class sizes and/or smaller schools that create moreintimate settings for teaching and learning and closerrelationships between students and teachers.

Organization of the ReportWe begin this report by identifying the limitations todate of school reform, which relies on professionaleducators and system-driven efforts. We argue thatcommunity organizing offers a promising approachthat addresses these limitations and that is consistentwith an emerging paradigm of school reform thatconnects communities and schools.

In the second section, we document the work ofcommunity organizing for school reform through anEducation Organizing Indicators Framework, eightindicator areas in which community organizinggroups work for school change. We discuss ourmethods for identifying the indicator areas and howthe indicator areas can be used to document theaccomplishments of community organizing.

Following this discussion of the indicator areas, thenext section provides an explanation of how theindicator areas work together in a change process thatleads from community capacity building to improvedstudent learning. A detailed story of education organ-izing at one site illustrates the theory of change.

In the section that follows the explanation of thetheory of change, we describe what contributes tovariation in education organizing strategies and goalsacross settings, drawing on all five case study groups.Then we turn to the value community organizingadds to school reform efforts.

We end the report with the challenges facingcommunity organizing for school reform and recom-mendations for supporting and expanding the workcommunity organizing groups are doing.

"I don't have a degree, but I've been going

to school all this time. I've learned new

approaches to curriculum, I've met wonderful

people with a wealth of knowledge, and here

I amthis little person from East Austin.

How many people have the opportunities to

learn from these people that ordinarily you

have to go to college to be near? I wouldn't

have. I even got to go to Harvard. So the

organization has shared and given me a lot."

II. The Problem and WhatYou Will Learn

By almost any measure, urban public schools arefailing to provide an adequate education to theirstudents. Such indicators of school well-being asstudent achievement, promotion rates, and retentionof teachers have all continued to decline relative tosuburban and more affluent areas. The job ofimproving schools has been left primarily to profes-sional educators and the education policy community.Yet the persistence of urban school failure has con-founded the professionals, as well as civic leadersand government officials. It is in this context of thewidening disparity between the education schools canprovide and what most urban public schools actuallydo provide that low- to moderate-income urbanresidents have turned to community organizing tomake schools work for their children.

The prevailing belief is that transforming schools andimproving student performance is beyond the scopeof community organizations. Despite the accomplish-ments of community organizing groups in improvingschools, their work is largely invisible. One reason is,many educators see urban communities as part of theproblem. Secondly, public officials and professionaleducators who actually carry out the programs, forwhich the community organizing groups campaigned,end up receiving the credit.' In addition, operating inthe professional paradigm of schools, those who makepolicy for and run public schools often discount theinsights of parents and community members becausethey lack education credentialsespecially when itcomes to what goes on in the classroom. 2

NOTES

1. Stein, Arlene. "Between Organization and Movement:ACORN and the Alinsky Model of Community Organizing,"In Berkeley Journal of Sociology: A Critical Review.XXXI: 1986.

2. Michael Katz, "Chicago School Reform as History," Teachers

College Record, (94:1), 1992, pp. 56-72; David Tyack, TheOne Best System: A History of American Urban Education,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. Katz andTyack, both historians of education, have chronicled the ascen-dance of professionals and bureaucratic structure in Americanschooling. In this model, the public role in education is limitedto selecting a school board or in some cases only to electingthe mayor. Self-reinforcing credentialing systems have grownup around this system to legitimize those who have gainedthese credentials and to keep out anyone who has not.

.L19

"We didn't want 'chalk and talk'. We wanted

children to interact with each other and an

integrated curriculum.... We wanted to hear

noise in our classrooms, because that would

mean that the children were discussing the

material " NEW YORK ACORN LEADER

A New ParadigmA growing body of research on the problems ofurban education and the failure of reform, however,points to the importance of connecting communitiesand schools. Most of these studies still reflect theprofessional paradigm that defines the domains ofcommunity and school as essentially separate andlimits the role of parents to serving the prioritiesof professionals. For example, the work on "parentinvolvement" points to the value of parents aspartners to professional educators, reinforcingteachers' work in activities such as reading to chil-dren at home, showing an interest in children'sschool achievement, providing enrichment activities,and volunteering in school.3 Similarly, "communityinvolvement" is generally conceived of as marshallingsupport services for low-income families, so thattheir children are ready to learn.4 Another strand,generally referred to as "parent engagement,"acknowledges the contribution of parents and com-munity members in supporting policy initiativesdevised by professional educators.5

In the last two decades, this discussion of therelationship between communities and schools hasbegun to shift the professional paradigm, describingways that parents and community members con-tribute to school change and to children's learning.6Those who study school change have noted that theinsularity of schools and their tendency to be self-reinforcing systems is one reason why they are so

10

resistant to reform. As one noted observer writes,"the more things change, the more they stay thesame." He has argued that there needs to be aculture change that makes school boundaries morepermeable to parents and community.' Anotherauthority on school change similarly supports theneed for permeable boundaries, calling for "deepinternal collaboration" to work in conjunction with"deep outside collaboration" in order for schoolsto have the resources and capacity to make andsustain change.8

NOTES

3. Joyce Epstein, "School/Family/Community Partnerships:Caring for the Children We Share," Phi Delta Kappan,(76:9), 1995, pp. 701-712 which creates a typology ofparents as partners. Catherine Snow, Preventing ReadingDifficulties in Young Children, Washington, DC: NationalAcademy Press, 1998; Jean S. Chall and Catherine Snow,

"Families and literacy: The contributions of out of schoolexperiences to children's acquisition of literacy," TheHarvard Families and Literacy Project Final Report,Washington, DC: National Institute of Education, 1982. AnneT. Henderson and Nancy Ber la, (Eds.) A New Generation ofEvidence: the Family is Critical to Student Achievement,Washington, DC: The Center for Law and Education, 1994.

4. Don Davies, P. Burch, & V.R. Johnson, "Policies to

increase family-community involvement." Equity and Choice,(8:3), 1992, pp 48-51; Joy G. Dryfoos, Full-Service Schools:A Revolution in Health and Social Services for Children,Youth and Families, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,Inc., 1994.

5. The Annenberg Institute for School Reform calls the workit does on school/community connections Public Engagementand publishes a newsletter entitled, Public EngagementToday. These and many other publications and initiativessee parent engagement as a way to build public support forpublic education.

6. Clarence N. Stone, "Civic Capacity and Urban Education,"2001, unpublished manuscript, http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gypt/stone/prolo.html

7. Seymour B. Sarason, The Culture of the School andthe Problem of Change, Boston: Allyn & Bacon, Inc., 1982(second edition); Sarason, The Predicatable Failure ofEducational Reform, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass,Inc., 1990.

8. Michael Fullan, Change Forces: The Sequel, Falmer Press:Philadelphia, 1999.

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Others in the new paradigm that links schools andcommunities have shown the contribution to students'success when schools value the knowledge and skillsof parents and community members. Researcherswho have looked at the role of culture in schoolinghave pointed to how local knowledge can enrich cur-riculum and pedagogy.9 Sociologists and politicalscientists have applied the concept of social capitalto education and noted that strong local culture andcommunity solidarity support children's sense ofidentity and buoy up their educational and careeraspirations.19 Research on Chicago school reform'sdemocratic localism, where parents and communitymembers have an equal role with educators in schooldecision-making, demonstrates the contribution ofsuch participation to curriculum and instructionand to raising student achievement."

This study of community organizing for school reformstrengthens the arguments for connecting communitiesand schools. It supports the assertion that changewill neither come about nor be sustained unless thereis authentic parent and community engagement inreform.12 Our work also contributes to research onhow valuing community knowledge affects pedagogyand student learning. Finally, it supports and showsthe process by which democratization of schoolscontributes to fundamental changes in teaching andlearning and in the nature of the school communitythat ultimately leads to higher student achievement.

Studying community organizing helped us linkthese arguments and develop a theory of change thatidentifies the pathways of influence that lead fromcommunity change to school change and increasedstudent achievement. Looking for indicators thatwould make the work of community organizingvisible led to identifying a set of indicator "areas"

NOTFS

9. Luis C. Moll, C. Amanti, D. Neff & N. Gonzalez, "Fundsof Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approachto Connect Homes and Classrooms, Theory into Practice,(XXXI:2), 1992, pp.132-141; Concha Delgado-Gaitan,"Traditions and Transitions in the Learning Process of MexicanChildren: An Ethnographic View," In George S. and L. Spindler(Eds.), Interpretive Ethnography of Education At Home andAbroad, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987,pp. 333-359; Beverly McConnell, "Education as a CulturalProcess: The Interaction Between Community and Classroomin Fostering Learning," In Jo Beth Allen & J.M. Mason(Eds.), Risk Makers, Risk Takers, Risk Breakers: Reducing

the Risks for Young Literacy Learners, Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann Educational Books, 1989, pp. 201-221; KatherineAu, "Participation in structures in a reading lesson withHawaiian children: Analysis of a culturally appropriateinstructional event." Anthropology and Education Quarterly,(11:2), 1980 pp. 91-115; Shirley Brice Heath, Ways WithWords: Language, Life and Work in Communities andClassrooms, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

10. Joseph Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human

Capital." American Journal of Sociology, (94: Supplement),1988, pp. S95-S120; Alejandro Portes and R.G. Rumbaut,Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation,Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Robert D.Putnam, Bowling Alone, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

11. Anthony S. Bryk, P. Sebring, D. Kerbow, S. Rol low, andJ.Q. Easton. Charting Chicago School Reform: DemocraticLocalism as a Lever for Change. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress. (1998): Designs for Change, What Makes TheseSchools Stand Out? Chicago elementary schools witha seven-year trend of improved reading achievement,Chicago, 1998.

12. Gary L. Anderson, "Toward authentic participation:Deconstructing the discourses of participatory reforms ineducation. American Educational Research Journal, (35:4),1998, pp.571-603; Hollyce C. Giles, "Parent Engagement asa School Reform Strategy," ERIC Clearinghouse on UrbanEducation Digest, (135), 1998, http://eric- web.tc.columbia.edu /digests /dig135.html

12

through which it is possible to document the contri-bution of community organizing to education reform.In the next section, we introduce the indicator areasand discuss how to use them.

Change will neither come about nor be

sustained unless there is authentic parent and

community engagement in reform.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF COMMUNITY

ORGANIZING

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reformand Research for Action, along with the New YorkUniversity's Institute for Education and Social Policyand its research partners, have identified more than200 groups nationwide engaged in community organ-izing for school reform. (A map of these groups is inAppendix B. A data base that provides informationabout the 140 groups identified by Research for Actionand the Cross City Campaign is available on the CrossCity Campaign Website, www.crosscity.org). Belowis a summary of criteria used to distinguish communityorganizing groups from other kinds of community-based groups working with parents for school reform,such as legal aid groups, parent volunteer groups,advocacy groups, social services, and cultural groups.

They work to change public schools to make themmore equitable and effective for all students.

They build a large base of members who takecollective action to further their agenda.

They build relationships and collective responsibilityby identifying shared concerns among neighborhoodresidents and creating alliances and coalitions thatcross neighborhood and institutional boundaries.

They develop leadership among community residentsto carry out agendas that the membership deter-mines through a democratic governance structure.

They use the strategies of adult education, civicparticipation, public action, and negotiation to buildpower for residents of low- to moderate-incomecommunities that results in action to addresstheir concerns.

III. The Education OrganizingIndicators Framework

Our charge at the outset of this study was to identifyindicators of the impact of community organizing forschool reform. In reviewing past work on indicators,we determined that establishing indicators is not a firststep. The starting point is a conceptual frameworkthat specifies categories or "domains" of impact. Howresearchers arrive at the categories varies, but indica-tors studies use three types of approaches, often inconcertconvening stakeholders, conducting empiricalresearch, and drawing on existing studies in the litera-ture. In some cases, the researchers convene a set ofstakeholders to identify elements they associate witha particular status as well as what constitutes satisfac-tory progress. For example, an indicators projectaimed at measuring "quality of life" in Jacksonville,Florida used a committee of volunteers to articulate avision for the city, then designed indicators to reflectthe vision. They came up with 74 indicator areaspublic safety, health, social environment, and soforth. Then they identified potential data sources.Sources included existing data and data that wouldbe collected through citizen surveys.

In other instances, indicators are empirically derived.These take the form of evaluation and documentationstudies that aim to understand the processes and rela-tionships between program strategies and outcomes.Still other indicator projects draw on existing empir-ical studies that have made the connection betweenparticular indicators and desired goals. For example,the authors of the Annie E. Casey Foundation'sKids Count were interested in children's health andwell-being. They identified research that associatedthese outcomes with a set of factorsincludingfamily structure and visits to the doctorand createdindicators based on those associations.

We used a combination of these strategies to developthe indicator areas applicable to community organ-izing for school reform. Ultimately, we identified eightindicator areasbroad categories that describe thework of education organizing and in which accom-plishments can be identified. We developed a first setof indicator areas through telephone interviews with19 groups across the country, based on questions thatwe asked about their organizing and about what theyconsidered to be evidence that their work was makinga difference. (See Appendix C for charts that give an

'4

overview of the 19 groups.) The indicator areas alsoreflect our review of literature on school improvementand community development. Research at the five casestudy sites provided us with opportunities to inquirefurther and to refine the indicator areas, throughinterviews with group members and organizers as wellas with other stakeholders in the setting, includingsuperintendents; teachers; principals; school boardmembers; political, civic, and business leaders; andmembers of other community based groups. A nationaladvisory group of academics, funders, educators, andorganizers also gave input. (See Appendix D for a list

of the national advisory group members.) As withother indicator studies, we derived indicators fromour observations in the sites, by eliciting them fromstakeholders, and from the literature that linked themto important outcomes.

Below the eight indicator areas are listed with defini-tions. These definitions come from our analysis of thework of the groups and represent the range of theiractivities within each indicator area. Together, theindicator areas make up the Education OrganizingIndicators Framework, which illustrates the range andvariety of accomplishments we found in each area.

DEFINITIONS OF THE INDICATOR AREAS

leadership Development builds the knowledge and skillsof parents and community members (and sometimesteachers, principals, and students) to create agendas forschool improvement. Leadership development is personallyempowering, as parents and community members take onpublic roles. Leaders heighten their civic participation andsharpen their skills in leading meetings, interviewing publicofficials, representing the community at public events andwith the media, and negotiating with those in power.

Community Power means that residents of low-incomeneighborhoods gain influence to win the resources and policychanges needed to improve their schools and neighborhoods.Community power emerges when groups act strategicallyand collectively. Powerful community groups build a largebase of constituents, form partnerships for legitimacyand expertise, and have the clout to draw the attentionof political leaders and the media to their agenda.

Social Capital refers to networks of mutual obligation andtrust, both interpersonal and inter-group that can be activatedto leverage resources to address community concerns. Somegroups call this "relational" power, while others describe thisprocess as one of building "political capital." Beginning withrelationships among neighborhood residents and within localinstitutions, community organizing groups bring togetherpeople who might not otherwise associate with each other,either because of cultural and language barriers (e.g. Latinos,African-Americans, and Asian-Americans) or because of theirdifferent roles and positions, such as teachers, school boardmembers, and parents. Creating settings for these "bridgingrelationships" in which issues are publicly discussed is thekey to moving a change agenda forward.

Public Accountability entails a broad acknowledgement ofand commitment to solving the problems of public education.It is built on the assumption that public education is acollective responsibility. Community organizing groups workto create public settings for differently positioned schoolstakeholderseducators, parents, community members,elected and other public officials, the private and non-profitsectors, and students themselvesto identify problems and

develop solutions for improving schools in low- to moderate-income communities. Through this public process, communityorganizing groups hold officials accountable to respond to theneeds of low- to moderate-income communities.

Equity guarantees that all children, regardless of socio-economic status, race, or ethnicity, have the resources andopportunities they need to become strong learners, to achievein school, and to succeed in the work world. Often, providingequitable opportunities requires more than equalizing thedistribution of resources. Community organizing groups pushfor resource allocation that takes into account poverty andneglect, so that schools in low-income areas receive priority.In addition, groups work to increase the access of studentsfrom these schools to strong academic programs.

School/Community Connection requires that schools becomeinstitutions that work with parents and the community toeducate children. Such institutional change requires that profes-sionals value the skills and knowledge of community members.In this model, parents and local residents serve as resourcesfor schools and schools extend their missions to becomecommunity centers offering the educational, social service,and recreational programs local residents need and desire.

High Quality Instruction and Curriculum indicate classroompractices that provide challenging learning opportunities thatalso reflect the values and goals of parents and the commu-nity. Community organizing groups work to create highexpectations for all children and to provide professionaldevelopment for teachers to explore new ideas, which mayinclude drawing on the local community's culture and involvingparents as active partners in their children's education.

Positive School Climate is a basic requirement for teachingand learning. It is one in which teachers feel they know theirstudents and families well, and in which there is mutualrespect and pride in the school. Community organizinggroups often begin their organizing for school improvementby addressing safety in and around the school and the needfor improved facilities. Reducing school and class size isanother way in which community organizing groups seek tocreate positive school climates.

14

Understanding the Education Organizing

Indicators FrameworkThe Education Organizing Indicators Frameworkis a set of charts that describes the work of educationorganizing in each of the indicator areas throughits primary strategies, along with the results thesestrategies are yielding, and potential data sourcesfor documenting the results. The Framework is asynthesis of charts we made for each case study site ineach of the indicator areas. The Education OrganizingIndicators Framework appears in Appendix E.As an example, below we have excerpted from thechart on Equity. In each indicator area we have listedthree to five primary strategies that communityorganizing groups use and a few specific examples.Here we use one primary strategy and set of examplesto demonstrate how to read the chart.

In the column on the left, in bold, is a primarystrategy that community organizing uses to addressequity: Increase funding and resources to under-

resourced schools. Beneath this strategy are threeexamples of the ways in which community organizinggroups are working to increase funding and resources.

In Appendix E, along with the charts for each indi-cator area, we describe what we have learned abouthow to apply the Education Organizing IndicatorsFramework, including cautions against using itpiecemeal or out of context.

Equity

Education organizing groups work in all eightindicator areas in this Framework. The Frameworkoffers organizing groups a means to explain theirwork as a set of strategies aimed toward specific goalsin each indicator area. They can review their accom-plishments in light of this set of discrete areas of workin order to continue to refine their strategies. In aparallel manner, funders and educators can use theFramework to decipher from their own observationsthe rationale and results of education organizing.

The danger of an indicators approach is oversimplifi-cation. By separating and naming parts of a complexprocess, it is easy to isolate the elements, missingthe complexity and inter-relationships among theindicator areas. The risk of doing this is increasedby the fact that the many players in school reformemphasize or value indicator areas differently. Werefer to the set of indicator areas as a framework toemphasize the importance of seeing them as a whole.

Another criticism of indicators is that they do notexplain the pathways of influence that connect theresults within indicator areas to ultimate goals."

NOTES

13. David S. Sawicki, and P. Flynn. "Neighborhoodindicators: a review of the literature and an assessment ofconceptual and methodological issues." In Journal of theAmerican Planning Association, Spring 1996. V62 n2,p 165 (19).

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Increase funding and resources tounder-resourced schools

Campaigns for new buildings and renovations to reduceovercrowding and increase safety

Make the case for and win allocation of funds for adulteducation and after-school programs

Write grants to raise private and public funds forschools and/or reform groups to provide teacherprofessional development.

New school facilities, buildings, and annexes

Increased money for lighting, crossing guards, playgrounds,etc.

Increased professional development opportunities for teachers

DATA SOURCES

School District facilities and personnel budgetsNeighborhood/city/District crime incident reports

Grant proposalsSurvey of school buildings and related facilitiesSurvey of parents and teachersSchool schedules and programs

16

Although the Framework provides a means fordocumenting the results of community organizing,it does not explain how the indicator areas worktogether toward the goal of improving schools.Based on analysis of our observations of educationorganizing in the case study sites, we developed atheory of change that explains how each indicatorarea contributes to improved student learning anddescribes a change process by which communityorganizing leads to improved schools and strongerstudent achievement. Based on analysis of ourobservations of education organizing in the casestudy sites, we developed a theory of change thatexplains how each indicator area contributes toimproved student learning and describes a changeprocess by which community organizing leads toimproved schools and stronger student achievement,in turn strengthening the community. In the nextsection we present the theory of change.

IV. The Change Process

The work of community organizing groups in eachof the eight indicator areas is important, but theoutcomes that are most important to everyone fromparents to politicians are those related to studentsand their school achievement. Stories of communityorganizing for school reform should create confidencethat ultimately student learning will improve. Toinvestigate the relationship between the indicatorareas and improving student learning, we returnedto each of the five case study sites to follow upselected education organizing stories." From analysisof these stories, we developed a theory of change that

shows how community organizing builds communitycapacity that leads to improving schools and higherstudent achievement. On the following page is amodel of the theory of change that underlies thework of community organizing for school reform.

On the far right of the model are the indicatorareas, high quality instruction and curriculum andpositive school climate, both strongly associated withschool improvement. High quality instruction andcurriculum connote classrooms where teachingis content rich, academically rigorous, and wherestudents are engaged.15 Positive school climate isevidenced through well-maintained facilities and asocial environment characterized by orderliness,safety, low incidence of discipline problems, goodteacher/student rapport, and respect.16 These are

NOTFS

14. In referring to education organizing "stories" we areadopting the language used by community organizinggroups for the narratives that describe their campaigns,leadership development, and successes.

15. Fred M. Newmann, W.G. Secada & G.G. Wehlage,A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Vision,Standards and Scoring, University of Wisconsin: WisconsinCenter for Education Research, 1995.

16. C. Cash, "A Study of the Relationship Between SchoolBuilding Condition and Student Achievement and Behavior,"unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia PolytechnicInstitute and State University, Blackburg, VA, 1993; T.Corcoran, L. Walker, & J.L. White, Working in UrbanSchools, Institute for Educational Leadership, Washington,DC, 1988; C. Emmons, The SDP School Climate Survey,"School Development Program Newsline, Spring, 1996.

17 15

16

0

'

Theory of Change: Relationship of Community CapacityBuilding and School Improvement

Community Capacity

LeadershipDevelopment

CommunityPower

Social

Capital

Public

Accountability

''

1

Equity

School

CommunityConnections

Curriculumand

Instruction

School

Climate

The theory of change model shows the pathway of influence between building community capacity and schoolimprovement. Work in three indicator areasleadership development, community power, and social capitalincreasescivic participation and leverages power through partnerships and relationships within and across communities, as wellas with school district, civic, and elected officials. Public accountability is the hinge that connects community capacitywith school improvement. Increased community participation and strong relationships together broaden accountabilityfor improving public education for children of low- to moderate-income families. Public accountability creates thepolitical will to forward equity and school/community connection, thereby improving school climate, curriculum, andinstruction making them more responsive to communities, laying the basis for improved student learning and achieve-ment. Stronger schools, in turn, contribute to strengthening community capacity.

indicator areas both directly associated in the researchliterature with raising student achievement.

The work of community organizing groups repre-sented on the far left of the model under communitycapacity buildingleadership development, commu-nity power and social capitalwork interactively tobuild public accountability. Through leadership devel-opment, community members learn the skills of civicparticipation and gain education expertise. They buildnew relationships and networks that augment socialcapital by bringing differently positioned stakeholdersinto public conversations about how to supportschool success. Through the power of numbers andstrategic alliances and actions, community residentsare able to bring public officials into accountablerelationships for improving schools.

The change process hinges on public accountability.This kind of accountability is the result of commit-ments made in public that obligate a wide rangeof stakeholdersparents, educators, communitymembers, officials, and othersto follow throughon their promises to improve schools. By broadeningaccountability for public education, communityorganizing advances issues of equity and school/community connection and brings new influences tobear on curriculum and instruction and on schoolclimate. With broad acknowledgement that equityand school/community connection are importantgoals, resources for schools in low-income areasbecome more plentiful; schools often turn into centersof the community. Respectful relationships amongparents and teachers and students expand ownershipfor the educational experience of children. Teachers'expectations for children's academic achievementrise as they come to understand community concerns,including parents' interest in their children's educa-tion. The potential for curriculum and instructionthat is both more rigorous and culturally responsiveincreases as wel1.17

As noted earlier, some researchers and educatorsacknowledge the importance of community supportand factors external to schools in determining theprospects for reform. Their work, however, does notdescribe the pathways that connect the communityand school domains and lead to students' academicsuccess. Research on Chicago school reform hasshown that where schools are open to parent andcommunity participation in decision-making, teachers

implement more innovative practices and students dobetter academicallyat least at the elementary leve1.18But Chicago is the only city in the country where statelaw has devolved power to schools and particularlyto parents and community members by creating awell-defined structure for meaningful participationin decision-making through local school councils.Yet even with the legal scaffolding for this kind ofparticipation, community organizing in particularneighborhoods and schools has supported andstrengthened the quality of the local school councils.19This suggests that it takes more than an institutional-ized structure, such as a local school council, forauthentic and full participation to occur. The theoryof change that we have developed helps to explainhow community organizing supports the success ofsuch reform even if it has legal or policy supports.

Interpreting education organizing stories using theEducation Organizing Indicators Framework and thetheory of change makes visible the unique approachto school reform that community organizing groupsare pioneering. Next we relate a story of educationorganizing that illustrates the theory of change"in action" and shows the accomplishments ofthe community organizing group in the eightindicator areas.

By broadening public accountability for public

education, community organizing advances

issues of equity and school/community

connection and brings new influences to

bear on curriculum and instruction and on

school climate.

NOTFS

17. Dennis Shirley, Community Organizing for School Reform,Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1997; Thomas Hatch, "Howcommunity action contributes to achievement," EducationalLeadership, (55:8),1998, pp. 16-19. James Comer, "Home-School Relationships as They Affect the Academic Success ofChildren," Education and Urban Society, (16), 1984, pp.323-337.

18. Bryk, et al., 1998; Designs for Change, 1998.

19. Sharon G. Rol low and A.S. Bryk, "Democratic politicsand school improvement: The potential of Chicago reform,"In C. Marshal (Ed.), The New Politics of Race and Gender,pp. 87-106, London: Falmer Press, 1993.

1917

The Small Schools Campaign in OaklandWhen you visit a setting where community organizingis working in education, you will not hear aboutindicator areas. You will hear about issues in the localcommunity and in the schools. You will hear storiesabout organizing campaigns and the experiences ofleaders, setbacks as well as forward motion, victoriesthat took a long time, and the practices and princi-ples of organizing and how they were applied ina particular case. The story below is about the workof the Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) towin land for new small schools. This neighborhoodstruggle for land is contributing to the realization ofa district-wide small schools reform policy that OCOhelped to write and get adopted. It is representativeof many stories we heard from all the different sitesbecause it shows how work at the local level isconnected to work at the policy level and exemplifiesthe ways a neighborhood and school are boundtogether from the vantage point of parents andcommunity members.

In 1986, Montgomery Ward, which operated a mailorder warehouse in a low-income Oakland neighbor-hood for more than half a century, closed downand abandoned its building. By 1993, OCO leadersfrom one of its member congregations began to hearconcerns about the abandoned building from commu-nity residents. The empty building was becominga neighborhood eyesore. Graffiti covered it. Thewindows were broken. People who lived near thebuilding reported that they heard gunshots comingfrom the building at night.

In all the neighborhoods where OCO works, leaderswere hearing about parents' concern with schoolovercrowding. As a result, the OCO Board decidedthat school overcrowding would be a focus for thewhole organization and leaders began research intothe issue. Their research revealed a huge difference instudent achievement between crowded schools in theirneighborhoods and smaller schools in more affluentareas. Their research into the effects of school size onstudent learning helped them see the advantages ofsmall schools and they began to develop a campaignto have the Oakland Unified School District adopt asmall schools policy. The search for locations for new,small schools brought them back to the MontgomeryWard site.

18

"At our annual meeting in May 1997, we publiclytalked for the first time to city representatives and theSchool District, and got their support for three badlyneeded schools, including one at the Ward's site,"reported an OCO leader. But gentrification threatenedthe neighborhood, and residents found themselves inthe middle of competing interests regarding how thesite should be used. The process of gentrification wasincreasing the property value of the site. Wheneverthe leaders thought they were close to having thebuilding torn down, they would meet new obstacles,often in the form of lawsuits launched by developerswho wanted to use the property for commercialpurposes or for new middle class housing. They alsohad to confront the Montgomery Ward Corporation.OCO members learned that while Montgomery Wardclaimed it lacked the financial resources to tear downthe building, the company was buying up chain storesthroughout the Northeast.

To succeed in demolishing the building and acquiringthe space for small schools, OCO used a range of tac-tics directed at different levels of the system. Leaderscontinuously met with neighborhood residents tobuild and replenish the ranks to keep the effort going.They sent 1,500 petitions to Montgomery Ward'sChicago headquarters. Leaders met with elected andnon-elected officials at city, School District, and statelevels to make their concerns known and enlist theirsupport. They held public events attended by thou-sands of residents at which they asked officials fortheir commitment. They met with Montgomery Ward'scorporate leaders. They made regular phone callsto mobilize people to take action and accompany thecity inspector into the building or monitor the pro-ceedings of lawsuits in courtrooms. Once demolitionbegan, they enlisted residents to take photos ofthe site to prove that demolition was proceeding asit should.

In February 2001, a group of developers made alast ditch legal effort to have the court grant a stayof demolition. By this time, however, the community,city, and School District were speaking with onevoice. The court denied the developer's appeal.

Eight years after the residents had identified theMontgomery Ward warehouse as a problem, thewrecking ball brought it down and temporary class-rooms were set up. In the process, new communityleaders were beginning to experience the reality of

20

,

y

.;

STRENGTHENED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT NONE OF US STANDS ALONE,

THROUGH OUR ORGANIZED EFFORTS WE KNOW WE CAN WIN MANY VICTORIES:

community power as teachers and parents met to-gether to design new small schools. As one leader toldus, "All these research meetings and actions and thework and training they necessitated became a veritableleadership "classroom" for new and emerging leaders,as well as for experienced leaders.... Armed with allthe facts, willing to do the work and to testify on ourown behalf, and strengthened with the knowledgethat none of us stands alone, through our organizedefforts we know we can win many victories."

"We were able to take on the big fight and

win " OCO LEADER

Applying the Theory of ChangeThe context for this story is one familiar to commu-nity organizing groups in urban areas: a low- tomoderate- income neighborhood threatened bygentrification fighting for housing affordability andfor better neighborhood schools and educationalopportunities for their children. In this particular case,the organizing began with the neighborhood's concernabout blight and gentrification and became linkedto the organizing group's small schools campaign,which was developing simultaneously with the effortto have the deteriorating Montgomery Ward ware-house demolished.

Over the course of the eight years it took to succeedin having the building torn down, the OCO smallschools campaign picked up significant momentum:OCO built a partnership with the Bay Area Coalitionfor Equitable Schools (BayCES), an established schoolreform group, and together they wrote a small schoolspolicy requiring significant community-school interac-tion, which the Oakland Board of Education adoptedin spring 2000; a newly appointed superintendentestablished a school reform office with responsibilityfor working in partnership with OCO and BayCESto implement new small schools; a city bond issuepassed (with OCO's help), which matched local fundswith state funding for new facilities and targetedlow- to moderate-income neighborhoods; the Bill andMelinda Gates Foundation contributed almost $16million to support new small schools in Oakland; andOCO, which represents 30,000 families, gained a seatat the table where designs for new small schools arereviewed and approved.

OCO's dual commitment to community and schoolsenabled its organizers and leaders to build a neighbor-hood resident base willing to take collective actionover a long period. Using the eight indicator areas, wecan point to the accomplishments of OCO and theprocess through which work in each indicator areamoved the group toward their ultimate goal ofimproving schools and outcomes for children.

19

The Building Blocks of CommunityOrganizing: Leadership Development,Community Power and Social Capital

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Identify and train parents and community members(and sometimes teachers, principals, and students)to take on leadership roles

Develop parents and community members(teachers, principals, and students) as politicallyengaged citizens

Promote individual, family, and communityempowerment

COMMUNITY POWER

Create a mass based constituency withincommunities that results in deep membershipcommitment and large turnout

Form partnerships for legitimacy and expertise

Create a strong organizational identity

Draw political attention to the organization's agenda

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Build networks

Build relationships of mutual trust and reciprocity

Increase participation in civic life

Organizers and long-standing leaders with experiencefrom past neighborhood campaigns regularly held"one-on-ones" or individual meetings with neighbor-hood residents, as well as house meetings with smallgroups of neighbors to surface neighborhood concerns.The work of organizers and leaders in helping resi-dents see their shared concerns is essential to build thekinds of relationships needed to take collective action.Their outreach also identified new leaders, necessaryto renew the ranks to sustain the eight-year struggle.The countless individual and group meetings, research,reflection, and public actions developed the knowl-edge, expertise, and strategic thinking leaders need. Asone leader pointed out, the Montgomery Ward cam-paign was a "classroom" for leadership development.

The deteriorating Ward's building and overcrowding inthe schools were issues on which community residents

20

were willing to act. Over the course of the campaign,OCO held several public actions that thousands ofcommunity residents attended. Their ability to turnout high numbers built their reputation in Oakland asa powerful organization and a voice of the community.

The Ward's story also demonstrates OCO's success inbuilding influence, through expanding social capital.In contrast to those living in more affluent neighbor-hoods, where relationships with civic and electedleaders often grow naturally out of work and socialcontacts, residents of low-income neighborhoodsrarely have such connections. Neighborhood leadersmet with city and School District officials and throughface-to-face discussions, they succeeded in buildingalliances around issues of mutual concern. The mayorand/or the superintendent regularly attended theirpublic actions. Through public actions and evaluationmeetings, OCO leaders and organizers broughttogether principals, teachers, and diverse communityresidentsall stakeholders in public educationwho do not usually associate with each otherbecause of ethnic/racial or linguistic differences ordifferences in roles and positions. This "bridging"social capitalacross diverse groups within the com-munity and across groups with different roles, status,and authorityis especially important in movingorganizing campaigns forward because it createsaccountable relationships that build the political willto override private interests.

The Bridge to School Change.

Public Accountability

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Create a public conversation about public educationand student achievement

Monitor programs and policies

Participate in the political arena

Create joint ownership/relational culture

Prevailing notions of accountability are usuallynarrow, with the burden for students' academic successfalling on teachers and students, regardless of the con-ditions for teaching and learning. This narrow viewof accountability has promoted a culture of blame inwhich teachers blame families for students' failures

2 2

and parents blame poor teaching for student failure.In contrast, community organizing groups seek tobroaden out accountability, with an array of publicschool stakeholders assuming responsibility for theconditions of public education and ultimately account-ability for student success. In the Montgomery Ward'sstory, for example, elected officials made public com-mitments when they attended OCO's annual meetingin which OCO discussed plans for new small schools.

By bringing their agenda into the public arena, OCOchallenged the bureaucratic culture in which decision-makers often pass responsibility off one to theother, and took a first step in holding public officialsaccountable. They were laying the groundwork formaking decisions regarding the public schools througha public process, rather than one that takes placebehind closed doors. This public discourse aboutissues of concern to low-income community residentscan bring elected officials to take up the interests ofthe community over those of powerful economic andpolitical players. In this case, neighborhood residentspersuaded their elected city and School District repre-sentatives to support the use of the warehouse site tobenefit neighborhood residents through the designa-tion of the land for new schools, rather than for plansthat would have mainly benefited developers and/ormiddle- and upper-income renters and home buyers.

The Pressure for Equity and School/Community Connection Enhances School

Climate and Instruction and Curriculum

EQUITY

Increase funding and resources to under-resourced schools

Maximize access of low-income children toeducational opportunities

Match teaching and learning conditions with those in thebest schools

SCHOOL/COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Create multi-use school buildings

Position the community as a resource

Create multiple roles for parents in schools

Create joint ownership of schools and schooldecision-making

POSITIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE

Improve facilities

Improve safety in and around the school

Create respectful school environments

Build intimate settings for teacher/student relations

HIGH QUALITY INSTRUCTION

AND CURRICULUM

Identify learning needs, carry out research, and implementnew teaching initiatives and structures

Enhance staff professionalism

Make parents and community partners in children'seducation

Hold high expectations

`'3

fry

Linking the effort to have the Ward's warehousetorn down with the campaign for new small schoolsreflects the struggle of OCO members for greaterequity. They made public the disparity in school sizeand quality between one part of the city and another,and their campaign aimed to make it possible fortheir children to benefit from the same teachingand learning conditions as those in more affluentneighborhoods. At the same time, opening newsmall schools would reduce overcrowding in nearbyschools, further reducing the disparity in school size.

From their research, OCO members learned that therelationships between teachers and students and theirparents were closer and more supportive in smallschools. These kinds of relationships shape schoolclimate, increasing parents' presence in the schooland exchange between teachers and parents aboutexpectations. The evidence from research on smallschools is that stronger relationships can also resultin fewer discipline problems and higher studentacademic motivation.20 A positive school climate canalso reduce the high level of teacher turnover thatplagues low-income urban schools.

Establishing new small schools goes beyond bricksand mortar, and securing the land was still the verybeginning of making small schools a reality. TheRequest for Proposals for small schools, which OCOhelped to write, requires that parents and teachersplan for small schools together, which can furtherstrengthen the school/community connection by cre-ating a shared vision. As part of the design process,OCO, with BayCES, is helping teachers and parentsinvestigate innovative school structures, as wellas new approaches to instruction and curriculum.For example, they are visiting other schools thatcan provide them with new images of teaching andlearning. By focusing on equity and strengtheningschool/community connection, OCO's small schools

2 4

campaign intended to influence the quality ofchildren's educational experience and thereby setthe stage for greater academic success.

The story of the small schools campaign in Oaklandillustrates the theory of action and how work in eachof the indicator areas can contribute to improving theconditions for teaching and learning that are likely toincrease student performance. The next two sectionsof this report address how to account for variationacross organizing sites and the unique contributionof community organizing to school reform.

OCO's small schools strategy was motivated andshaped by the local context, both the challenges andopportunities that the city's political, economic, anddemographic environment presented. The strategywas influenced by OCO's neighborhood-orientedorganizing approach through which issues are raisedand priorities set. The history of OCO's work on otherissues, as well as its prior efforts in education, shapedthe direction of its education organizing and con-tributed to its success in obtaining change at the policylevel. This story illustrates how organizing proceeds onmultiple levelsaddressing neighborhood issues whileat the same time seeking to influence policy citywide.Each of these influencescontext, organizationalstructure, the phase of organizing, and the multiplelevels of workoffers insight for interpreting OCO'seducation organizing story. The next section of thisreport discusses education organizing stories in theother case study sites as well, using these four influ-ences to make sense of variation in the strategies andaccomplishments of community organizing groups.

NOTES

20. Michelle Fine and 1.I. Somerville, (Eds.), Small Schools,

Big Imaginations, A Creative Look at Urban Public Schools,Chicago, IL Cross City Campaign for Urban SchoolReform, 1998

V. Making Sense of the Variationamong Organizing Groups

We have used the story of one community organizinggroup, Oakland Community Organizations, toexplain the indicators and the theory of change. Yet,no two organizing efforts or campaigns look exactlyalike. There is a great deal of variation across educa-tion organizing sites and an observer might wellask what accounts for this variation. So far, we havediscussed the "rules" that underlie the process ofcommunity organizing, but we have not yet explainedthe differences in how these rules are applied inparticular places, by particular groups, and at partic-ular points in time. Understanding the influences onorganizing activity helps to make sense of how organ-izing plays out across settings and how activitiestaking place at a particular point in time relate to thelarger effort. This section of the report uses examplesfrom all of the sites that we studied to discuss theseinfluences. They are:

CONTEXT

ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

PHASE OF ORGANIZING

LEVELS OF WORK: NEIGHBORHOOD, SCHOOL,

DISTRICT, AND STATE

ContextCharacteristics of the region, state, and city in whicha community organizing group works shape theiractivity. Important contextual characteristics includethe complexity and size of the school district, existingreform policies, or their absence, at city and statelevels, the political environment, economic conditions,demographics, and the nature of the local communityorganization and non-profit infrastructure. Here weselect a few salient contextual influences in each sitethat we believe shaped their definition of the key edu-cational problems to be addressed and the strategiesthey employed to resolve them.

Oakland CornmlinityOrgantiatAs the story in the last section showed, OaklandCommunity Organizations defined the problem asovercrowded, under-performing schools in Oakland'slow- to moderate-income neighborhoods. The over-crowding was the result of an explosive growth innew Latino and Asian immigrant populations in his-torically African-American areas and an accompanying

lack of investment in new school buildings to accom-modate the children of this growing population.Furthermore, the turnover of three superintendentsin four years created instability in leadership at theschool district level and, consequently, an absence ofa coherent plan for reform of the city's schools. In thisvacuum, OCO's collaboration with BayCES, a schoolreform organization with access to the newest super-intendent, led to small schools becoming a majorcomponent of the District's reform plan and to thecreation of a new office for reform to implementthe policy.

Logan Squarearhood_AssoriationThe Logan Square area in Chicago also experiencedan influx of mostly Latino immigrants. As in Oakland,the consequences were overcrowded schools. Chicago'searlier school reform initiative created an importantvehicle, the Local School Council, for organizingparents around education issues and gave the commu-nity a link to the schools and authority in dealingwith education-related issues. As the introductorystory relates, LSNA organized parents and communitymembers and led successful campaigns to obtainfunding to build annexes to relieve overcrowding.

The schools that benefited from LSNA's efforts torelieve overcrowding became active members of theorganization. Looking for other ways to strengthenschool/community connections, parents and educatorssought to address parents' isolation and lack ofempowerment. They fought for new schools, expan-sion of parent mentoring, and the development ofCommunity Learning Centers. LSNA's Parent MentorProgram (described in the opening of this report),which brings parents into classrooms, and the estab-lishment of community centers at six schools,addressed this need, and fostered individual growthfor the hundreds of women who have participated inthe program since its inception. Graduates run thecommunity centers and are taking on other leadershiproles in Logan Square.

Th_e_Aliiance0_rganizing ProjectThe Alliance Organizing Project (AOP) in Philadelphiahas worked both with individual schools and city-wide, focusing its efforts on issues of safety, studentachievement, and teacher quality. Recognizing thelack of parent engagement with previous waves ofreform, a new superintendent and many of the city'sadvocacy groups conceived of AOP in 1995 as a

05 23

24

component of the District's reform plan. AOP's missionis to help in the "transformation in the relationshipbetween every school and the parents and communitieswhich surround it."21

AOP's safety campaigns are the direct result of thedeteriorated school facilities and extreme conditionsof blight and high crime in the declining city neigh-borhoods where it has been most active. The safetycampaign targeted city council, which passed anordinance to increase funding for crossing guards.AOP also raised funds from local non-profits and theDistrict for after-school programs, providing childrenwith a safe place after school hours as well as withacademic enrichment.

Another set of problems that AOP identified was theimpact of teacher shortages, teacher turnover, and thehigh concentration of inexperienced teachers in low-performing schools. Problems with teacher recruitmentand school assignment have to do with a city residencyrequirement for public employees and with unioncontract rules on seniority and transfers. Lack of ade-quate funds in the School District of Philadelphia andan ongoing feud between the city and state about thestate's contribution to the School District's budget,further complicate the situation. AOP has taken theinitiative to address these complex issues on severalfronts: they joined in a coalition with advocacy groupsto demand that the city alter its residency requirement;they fostered parent-union dialogue at local schoolsand citywide with a social justice agenda; they joinedothers in the state capitol demanding increasedfunding; and most recently, AOP banded togetherwith union, advocacy, and other community based

D

groups to head off privatization of the District.

New York ACORNThe size, complexity, and political nature of theNew York City school system present an enormouschallenge to education organizing, leading New YorkACORN to work on a variety of fronts and at dif-ferent system levels. Extreme discrimination in accessto selective programs at every level of the system,documented by New York ACORN through its SecretApartheid reports, is another defining characteristicof the context. Underlying the discrimination in accessto challenging programs is the inadequacy of mostneighborhood schools to prepare low-income, mostlyminority students for these programs.

In the face of these problems, there has been amovement to establish small schools with communitypartners throughout New York City. New YorkACORN's efforts to establish small autonomous highschools both shape and take advantage of themomentum for small schools. Currently, New YorkACORN is working with three new high schools andstarting on the process of establishing a fourth. Toimpact schools at a larger scale, New York ACORNalso launched a campaign to work with a numberof elementary schools in three South Bronx Districts.In support of more local efforts, New York ACORNhas formed coalitions at both the city and state levels

NOTES

21. School District of Philadelphia, Children AchievingStrategic Action Design, 1995-1999, Philadelphia, 1995, p.iVIII-1.

4...r) 6

to push for funding equity and policies to increasespending on instructional materials, lower class size,attract qualified teachers, institute early childhoodeducation, and ensure adequate facilities.

Austin InterfaithThe majority of children from low- to moderate-income families live in Austin's East Side neighbor-hoods. Many of the schools that have become part ofAustin Interfaith's network of "Alliance Schools" arein these neighborhoods, close to the congregationsthat are among its member institutions. The traditionof working with local congregations on issues thatconcern their membership and the relatively smallsize of the Austin School District (about 100 schools)shapes Austin Interfaith's strategy of working closelywith individual schools and congregations in"Alliance communities."

Concern about student achievement surfaced amongAustin Interfaith's members in the context of Texas'emphasis on testing and rating schools. The District'smagnet programs reinforced the geographic divisionamong children from different neighborhoods andbackgrounds. Children in East Side schools were notgetting the preparation necessary to gain entry tomagnet programs. The unequal access to magnet pro-grams led to the development of the Young ScientistProgram, designed to prepare students to apply tothe competitive science magnet middle school.

Different contextual features in each of the sitesoffered both opportunities and constraints. Each ofthe groups used strategies that reflected local issuesand capitalized on the opportunities for action.Contextual constraints, however, can draw out orset back efforts and can require compromise orreevaluation of initial goals.

Organizational CharacteristicsAlmost all community organizing groups trace backto Saul Alinsky, whose community organizing in the1930s was the first to take the methods of unionorganizing in developing power and apply them tosolve issues affecting neighborhoods. Over the years,community organizing has been influenced by theexperiences of the civil rights movement, as wellas by new leaders within Alinsky's own IndustrialAreas Foundation and other national communityorganizing networks.

In spite of a common heritage, today the organiza-tional characteristics of community organizing groupsvary widely. Some of these characteristics includemethods of recruitment, governance structures,membership in national organizing networks, multipleor single issue focus, the size of staff, funding base,and alliances and partnerships. (See Table 1 for asummary of recruitment method, network member-ship, and multiple-/single-issue focus for the five casestudy groups.)

Table 1: Range of Organizational Characteristics of the Five Groups

CASE STUDYGROUPS

RECRUITMENTMETHOD

NETWORKMEMBERSHIP

SINGLE- OR MULTIPLE-ISSUE FOCUS

Alliance Organizing Project Individual membership(school-based)

Single-Education

Austin Interfaith Faith-based institutions,schools, unions

Industrial Areas Foundation(IAF)

Multiple

Logan SquareNeighborhood Association

Faith-based institutions,schools, and communityorganizations

Multiple

New York ACORN Individual membership(neighborhood-based)

Association of CommunityOrganizations forReform Now (ACORN)

Multiple

Oakland CommunityOrganizations

Faith-based Institutions Pacific Institute ofCommunity Organizing(PICO)

Multiple

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Organizing ModelBuilding a strong base is essential for any organizationthat relies on collective action and high turnout(large numbers of participants who attend their meet-ings) to build power. Austin Interfaith and OaklandCommunity Organizations both follow a faith-basedinstitutional model of organizing. In this model, con-gregations are members of the community organizinggroup and congregants become part of the organizinggroup. Congregational representatives make up theirgoverning boards. This model has increased the eco-nomic diversity of both Austin Interfaith and OCO,because their member congregations have both low- tomiddle-income members. In Austin, Alliance Schoolsalso are institutional members. A recent developmentis the pairing of a neighborhood congregation witha neighborhood school in an "Alliance community".Sometimes a "community" includes a congregationfrom outside the neighborhood with middle-classconstituents who wish to align themselves with low-income communities working on equity and otherissues that they believe should be of broad publicconcern. Austin Interfaith also has a union as an insti-tutional member. Both Austin Interfaith and OCOwork at the neighborhood level as well as on issuesthat cross over neighborhoods and schools.

LSNA is also based on an institutional model, but itsmembers include a varied set of neighborhood groups,e.g., block clubs, congregations, cultural and socialservice agencies, and schools. Representatives from itsmember organizations come together to plan andapprove the LSNA Holistic Plan, which guides theactivity of the organization. For the most part, LSNAdoes not tackle citywide issues unless they affect itslocal neighborhood.

In contrast to the institutional model of building abase, New York ACORN recruits members directlyfrom neighborhoods, going door-to-door. New

York ACORN organizers from neighborhoodchapters that they work with to identify local issuesand take action. Citywide committees, includingan education committee, are made up of chaptermembers and determine issues for citywide and state-wide campaigns. As a result, New York ACORNworks on multiple tracks, with efforts at thechapter level focused on issues at local schools andcitywide committees focused on district, city andstate policy.

AOP, because of its origins in Philadelphia's schoolreform plan, starts its recruitment with parentsfrom select neighborhood schools. Parents becomemembers of school-based Parent Leadership Teamsand these teams join together through AOP activitiescitywide to address concerns that cross over neigh-borhoods and schools. Because AOP's membershiprecruitment is based in parents with children inschools, who leave when their children move on,AOP has to work hard to maintain and expand itsbase. They also have had to work hard to win thesupport of principals and teachers, which furtherchallenged their recruitment efforts.

Network MembershipThree of the five groups, Austin Interfaith, New YorkACORN, and OCO, are part of national organizingnetworks. These networks facilitate local affiliatescoming together around shared interests. They alsoprovide training to organizers and leaders andconnect local groups giving them fresh ideas andrenewed energy. They hold conferences for intellectualexchange about the substance of education reforms.They sometimes bring additional financial resourcesto a local group. In some instances, statewide affili-ates of a network work together to gain stateresources and policy change.

The two groups not a part of a national organizingnetwork, AOP and LSNA, have made use of othernational networks. For example, LSNA is a memberof United Power for Action and Justice, the IAF metro-politan-wide organization in Chicago and collaborateswith other groups including the Cross City Campaign.AOP taps into the Cross City Campaign for UrbanSchool Reform, which provides it with training andcontacts with other education organizing groups. AOPparticipates in the National Coalition of EducationActivists as well. As a result of the Indicators Project,the case study sites have also been able to learn from

2 8

each other, through cross-site visits and conferencesa new development that gives them the opportunityto learn from each other's experiences and from thepractices of their different organizing models.

Multiple IssiietSingleis_sue_Gro_up_sAn advantage of community organizing groupsthat work on multiple issues (all the groups in thisstudy except AOP) is that they can draw on alliesand experience from work in other issue areas tostrengthen and inform their education work. Thereputations that these organizations have establishedthrough their work in the areas of housing, immigra-tion policy, bank lending policy, fair wages, andwelfare reform strengthens their hand for organizingaround education issues. They have built up areservoir of political capital on which to draw.

For example, through New York ACORN's extensivework in housing and fair wage issues in New YorkCity, it has made strong allies among individuals whosubsequently have risen in political and organizationalcircles. New York ACORN draws on these associa-tions to facilitate working relations with peopleimportant in education and to form alliances whenthere are areas of common interest.

StaffingThe way in which the groups structure and usetheir staffs most often reflects the demands of theireducation organizing strategy. Because AOP is asingle-issue group, all of its organizers focus oneducation. Three of the four other groups have atleast one and sometimes as many as eight staffmembers dedicated solely to education organizing.Any of a group's other organizers, however, mightalso address education issues as they come up in thecourse of talking to neighborhood residents abouttheir concerns.

New York ACORN has a Schools Office staffed bytwo senior staff, with other organizers devoted tothe New York ACORN high schools. OCO, with itspartner BayCES, hired a teacher on special assignmentwho was a congregant in one of OCO's churches todo education organizing, specifically to introduceteachers to the small schools campaign and recruitthem for design teams. LSNA's education organizersare focused on its Parent Mentor program, coordina-tion of the community centers, and on more generaleducation issues. Austin Interfaith organizers work

with specific member institutions, among themindividual schools. Regardless of how organizersare deployed, staff of community groups are small,given the scale and complexity of the educationproblems that they take on.

_FundingThe majority of groups involved in educationorganizing have budgets that are under $500,000.22In our case study sample, three of the five groupsAOP, Austin Interfaith, and OCO had annualbudgets under $400,000, similar to most of the 19groups in the telephone survey. (See Appendix C forthe range of funding levels of the 19 groups in thetelephone survey.) Two groups had budgets that weremuch larger. LSNA, which receives grants directly torun programs in the schools, has an annual budgetover $1 million. New York ACORN's annual budget,which is also over $1 million, supports educationorganizing in several of New York City boroughs.Most community organizing groups raise moneythrough a combination of membership contributions,foundations, and/or government grants.

Unlike the others, AOP's initial funding was entirelydependent on its association with Philadelphia'sAnnenberg-funded school reform plan (1995-2000).During that period, its funding reached $800,000annually. With the end of the Annenberg grant,however, AOP has had to raise all its funds itself andits current budget is similar to that of most othercommunity organizing groups. (See Table 2 for asummary of the budgets of the case study groups.)Despite the differences in funding levels, it is fair tosay that working from relatively modest budgets,they are seeking to leverage significant resources forpublic schools.

22. New York University's Institute for Education andSocial Policy, with California Tomorrow, Designs for Change,and Southern Echo, Mapping the Field of Organizing forSchool Improvement: A report on education organizing inBaltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, the Mississippi Delta, NewYork City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC,2001, see chart on p. 15.

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Table 2: Budget Range of the Five Groups

ALLIANCE ORGANIZING PROJECT (AOP) $250,000 to 400,000

AUSTIN INTERFAITH Less Than $250,000

LOGAN SQUARE (LSNA) $1,000,000 to 1,600,000

NEW YORK ACORN $1,000,000 to 1,600,000

OAKLAND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS (OCO) $250,000 to 400,000

AlilanCeSand_a_alitiOMAnother characteristic of these groups is the kind ofalliances and coalitions that they form and how theyuse those relationships to strengthen the organizationitself. OCO derived educational expertise through apartnership with BayCES, a school reform group thathad experience working with the district and legitimacyin the field of education. LSNA has many alliances,including partnerships that bring expertise to theireducation efforts. For example, they are partnering witha local university to train 45 neighborhood residents tobecome bi-lingual teachers. They also are working witha local advocacy and technical assistance group indeveloping the neighborhood-wide literacy effort. NewYork ACORN has worked in collaboration and coali-tion with many different kinds of organizations tobuild legitimacy, gain expertise, and increase politicalclout. For example, it partnered with a university-basedresearch and technical assistance organization todocument discrimination and the concentration ofunder-performing schools in the South Bronx. NewYork ACORN formed a coalition with other organ-izing groups in New York City to push citywide issuessuch as more equitable spending for class size reduc-tion, school construction, and teacher quality.

AOP partnered with another community organizinggroup to investigate issues of teacher vacancy inneighborhood schools. A well-established Philadelphiaadvocacy group published the findings along withpotential solutions. More recently, AOP has been partof a citywide coalition to fight against privatizationof the public schools.

Despite the variations described here, all of the groupsbelieved it important to build organizational capacity

28

through alliances and coalitions. They were alwayslooking for opportunities to expand their reach,legitimacy, and expertise, approaching this task inways that best fit their goals.

Phase of OrganizingOrganizing campaigns take place over a long periodof time and, generally, organizing groups work onmultiple campaigns and activities simultaneously.Understanding the phase of a campaign in which agroup is working, or where an activity fits into acampaign, is critical for seeing its relevance to a widerscale effort with larger goals. It is also importantfor being able to define expectations for the group'saccomplishments at a given point in time.

The organizing group also takes on different rolesin its relationship to educators at different points inan organizing process. The group may call on existingalliances at the start of a campaign, but play anoutside role in actions that require obtaining publiccommitments. As an organizing group moves closerto its goals, such as policy change or alliances withschools, it moves into a collaborative relationshipwith educators in order to see these efforts through.Nonetheless, the groups must balance their increasing"insider status" with a position that allows them tocontinue to hold schools and school systems account-able for following through on their commitments.The tensions in this insider/outsider role threadthrough the discussion of the phases of organizingthat follows. Ideally, working collaboratively whilemaintaining the tension of being differently positionedwill lead both community organizing groups andeducators to change in ways that foster productiveeducation reform.

30

Learning from Past ExperienceThere is a learning curve in organizing. Phases oforganizing often build on understandings of whathappened previously. Strategies and campaigns at onemoment generally represent refinements of previouslysuccessful or disappointing efforts. Learning is em-bedded in the practice of organizing through the useof evaluation and reflection following every action, inwhich organizers and leaders ask themselves questionssuch as What went well? What could we do better?and What do we need to meet our goals? Multi-issuegroups apply lessons learned from organizing on otherissues to inform their education organizing as well.

Of the case study groups, all had been organizing ineducation for about a dozen years, with the exceptionof AOP, which has been organizing about half aslong. New York ACORN started working on estab-lishing schools years before it opened the first NewYork ACORN high school in 1996. Although its earlyefforts at starting schools were successful, New YorkACORN learned it was difficult to maintain contactand have input once the school was up and runningbecause of New York ACORN's status as a groupexternal to the school. New York ACORN is applyinglessons learned from these early experiences abouthow to structure its schools so it can develop a strongcollaboration with its partner high schools.

OCO also learned from its earliest phases of educa-tion organizing. OCO began with programmaticinitiatives such as after-school homework clubs. Thesegrew out of the perception of many of its congrega-tion members that more youth programming couldhelp stem crime and gang activity. When these pro-grammatic efforts did not improve students' schoolexperience enough, OCO education organizing turnedto establishing a school within a school and charterschools. They realized, however, that they needed asystem-wide approach and turned to the developmentof the small schools campaign.

Setting ExpectationsThe phase of organizing should be considered whensetting expectations for the nature and scale of impactof a group's work. Over time there are some initia-tives that endure, continuing into increasingly maturephases. Several of the groups have reached a phasein which their work impacts student learning. Forexample, as illustrated by the story at the beginningof this report, LSNA's Parent Mentor program reachesinto the classroom and in the last five years, all ofLSNA's core schools have experienced significantincreases in test scores. Teacher surveys and inter-views with parents and principals attribute some ofthis gain to the regular presence of parents in theclassroom through LSNA's Parent Mentor program.

Five of Austin Interfaith's Alliance Schools now haveYoung Scientists programs in the sixth grade. Thisspecial class has resulted in more children from EastSide schools gaining entry into the magnet sciencemiddle school. Teachers from the lower grades havecommented that the Young Scientists program hasstimulated them to improve their curricula andraise expectations, as they try to prepare all theirstudents to be able to qualify for the rigorous sixthgrade program.

The first round of small schools is just being imple-mented as part of the OCO small schools campaign.It is still too early to expect dramatic impact onstudent achievement, but the District has set goalsfor improvement for all new small schools and theirprogress will be tracked.

Using the model of the Theory of Change wepresented in section IV, it is possible to see wherethe work of a group falls in the process between com-munity capacity building and affecting school climateand classroom instruction. Several related campaignsare always going on simultaneously, each at differentpoints in the process. By considering the kinds ofaccomplishments that could be expected at variousorganizing phases, expectations can be fitted to theactual work in progress.

:,,

Levels of Work: Neighborhood, School,District, and StateCommunity organizing involves balancing the needto work locally to build the membership base and thecapacity to implement change with the need to workat broader levels to affect policy that supports localchange. As a result, it is necessary for organizinggroups to work at multiple levels simultaneously.Building a base of members is the result of addressinglocal issues through organizing campaigns or actionsleading to concrete outcomes, often within a relativelyshort time frame. In order to effect change, however,it is often necessary to work at other system levels.It is the job of the organizer to energize members byaddressing their immediate concerns while at the sametime making connections with broader efforts in orderto generate adherents for longer and larger scalecampaigns, as well as more abstract policy goals.23

NOTES

23. Gary Delgado, Organizing the Movement: The Rootsand Growth of ACORN, Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress, 1986; Janice Hirota, R. Jacobowitz, and P. Brown, TheDonor's Education Collaborative: Strategies for SystematicSchool Reform, Chapin Hall Center for Children, Universityof Chicago, 2000; Janice Hirota & L. Jacobs, ConstituencyBuilding for Public School Reform, Academy for EducationalDevelopment & Chapin Hall Center for Children, Universityof Chicago, 2001.

11

: D

37]

P

The OCO small schools story illustrates work onmultiple levels. The fight to get the Ward's buildingtorn down began as a local issue to address blightin a neighborhood. Although many participants inthat fight came to understand that the struggle toget Wards demolished had become tied to the smallschools campaign and reducing overcrowding atneighborhood schools, there were those whoseinterest was primarily around addressing neighbor-hood blight. Talking to them would surface theissue of blight and not necessarily reveal how theMontgomery Ward struggle was embedded withinthe small schools campaign. Vantage point and per-ceived self-interest plays a role in how participantsunderstand any organizing campaign, and whatlevel and aspects of organizing they emphasize.

In building leadership and community power at thelocal level, community organizing also builds thecapacity of parents, teachers, and administrators toeffectively carry out reform efforts and programs.OCO's work with parents and teachers on smallschool design teams is a case in point. Through thedesign team process, teachers and parents gain exper-tise to assure that small schools can deliver on thepromise of offering a better environment for learning.

Knowing that organizing works at multiple levels helpsto put into perspective the scale at which a group isworking. It is not always easy to see the connectionsamong the different activities and the work of thegroup is to figure out how to connect activities goingon at different levels. Making these connections isimportant if the group's work is to be understood byboth their own constituencies and external audiences.

Having looked at the influences on communityorganizing, the next section looks at the added valueof community organizing for school reform. Thestory of Oakland's small schools campaign illustrateshow critical the work of a community organizinggroup was to initiate a reform effort that paidparticular attention to the needs of children in low-to moderate-income neighborhoods and to keep theeffort going, even in the face of significant obstacles.We turn to examples from the other sites to explainfurther the ways that community organizing addsvalue to school reform efforts through sustaining it,persistence, building political will, and producingchange that reflects the concerns of parents andcommunity members.

VI. The Added Value of CommunityOrganizing to School Reform

How is community organizing different from themyriad of other approaches in the school reformmarketplace, including many that embrace parentand community connections?

Community organizing is not a prescription for aparticular educational program or a restructuringapproach. Education research and its application inthe development of effective practices are essential toimprove classroom instruction and curriculum andschool climate. Organizations that support schoolchange through advocacy, technical assistance, andparent engagement provide expertise to educatorsand community members in developing strategies andexploring alternatives for school improvement. Theunique role of community organizing in educationreform is in building community capacity and linkingto school improvement through public accountability.The indicator areas associated with communitycapacity and public accountability are almost totallyabsent in the work of school reform as it is usuallydefined. Even where there is overlap between thework of community organizing and the work ofeducators and reform expertsin the areas of equity,school/community connections, curriculum andinstruction, and school climatecommunity organ-izing adds a critical dimension.

Education organizing adds value to school reformbecause of the unique and important vantage pointthat community members and organizers bring totheir work. Community organizing groups are rootedin a neighborhood and have a long-term commitmentand a deep understanding of what it takes to supportlocal families. In this study, four of the groups havebeen organizing in their settings for 20 years or more.They see schools as tied to other issues that needattention and improvement. Their constituents aredeeply affected and angry when public institutionsare ineffective or corrupt. Organizers tap constituents'anger and motivation and facilitate their buildingthe skills and power to become formidable anduncompromising in working for institutional change.Community residents are in it for the long haul,and they have much to gain both for their familiesand collectively. This level of commitment is criticalif reform is going to address equity issues and school/

33 31

community connections authentically, which leadsto the kinds of improvements to school climate andcurriculum and instruction that actually make adifference in student learning.

Community organizing for school reform adds valueto school reform efforts in four ways:

sustaining the vision and momentum for changeover time;

persisting in working towards change, despiteobstacles and setbacks;

building political capital and creating the politicalwill that motivates officials to take action; and

producing authentic change in policies andprograms to reflect the concerns of parents andcommunity members.

Sustaining the Work Over TimeSchool reform is a long-term enterprise, yet manyfactors in the larger context, such as short-termfunding patterns and turnover of politicians andschool and city administrations, mean that reformscome and go without taking hold. Community organ-izing groups are committed to the neighborhoodswhere their members live, and serve as an externalforce to keep up the momentum for improvementover time and with a changing cast of players. Thereare three ways in which community organizinghelps to sustain reform efforts over time: maintaininga strong base of constituents, acting as externalmonitors, and creating a generation of school staffcommitted to the new paradigm of schools.

Building the base: To keep up the energy andmotivation required to engage members in campaignsover time, community organizers and leaderscontinually work on building the base of constituents.For example, it took many years of organizing beforeOakland city officials actually broke ground for newschools. Some neighborhood residents were part ofthe effort for the entire eight years that it took toget the building torn down. During that time, theorganizing sustained community participation in thefight. Organizers could tap into neighborhood resi-dents' deep commitment to reclaiming the Wards sitefor neighborhood use and to improving local educa-tional opportunities.

32

Monitoring reforms: Community organizing alsocontributes to sustaining reform by monitoring pro-grams and promises and, in this way, encouragingfollow-through. New York ACORN offers an exampleof sustaining reform through assuming the role ofmonitor. As detailed earlier, New York ACORN car-ried out studies that documented discrimination ininforming African-American and Latino parents aboutinnovative programs within neighborhood schools.Extensive press coverage of New York ACORN's

study and its own dissemination strategies kept thefindings under public scrutiny, leading the chancellorto respond. He created a policy to provide a uniformprotocol across schools for disseminating information.Once the chancellor made a commitment, New YorkACORN assumed the role of monitor, and oneyear later, repeated the study finding that the policystill had not been implemented. They used the find-ings of the second report as the basis for furtherresearch and action. A turnover in chancellors, how-ever, has meant that New York ACORN has had tokeep up the fight for equity in other ways, includingits campaign to bring resources to schools in theSouth Bronx.

Connecting with educators: Community organizingalso contributes to sustainability by nurturing like-minded professionals. The assumptions and practiceof teachers and administrators, who work in settingsthat have become more collaborative, change asthey begin to adopt the stance of the new paradigmconnecting communities and schools. Some go on tolead other schools and develop adherents and leadersin another generation. Those who stay in a settingkeep up the principles of strong school/communityconnection by "socializing" incoming principals andteachers. In Austin, for example, there is a cadre ofprincipals who were socialized in the collaborativeculture of Alliance Schools and who are now bringingtheir own schools into the network. Recently, thedistrict has contributed to creating a second genera-tion of principals by calling on experienced Allianceschool principals to interview candidates foradministrative openings at Alliance Schools. A self-sustaining culture is forming in which school staff,who have credibility among their colleagues, organizefor the same goals as those of Austin Interfaith. Inaddition to Austin, we have noted the same phenom-enon in the Logan Square neighborhood and inNew York.

34

PersistenceWithout persistent champions, the strong counter-forces of entrenched bureaucracy and competingpolitical and economic interests can derail reforms.Community organizing brings persistence to reformefforts in three ways: strong motivation, researchand learning from experience, and power through itsbase of constituents and strategic collaborations.

Motivation: The high level of passion and commitmentof community residents most directly affected byfailing neighborhood schools motivates them to findways around obstacles. The origins of New YorkACORN's Secret Apartheid reports offers an exampleof how the passion and anger of two communityresidents led the system to adopt a new policy. Whentwo New York ACORN members, one white and oneAfrican-American, compared notes on how they weretreated when they inquired about their neighborhoodschool, they realized that they had received completelydifferent information about available options. Whilethe principal gave the white parent a tour and a fulldescription of the school's specialized programs, theAfrican-American parent received superficial informa-tion and her request to meet with the principal wasdenied. Their anger about the disparity in theirexperiences resonated with the experience of otherNew York ACORN members and prompted the firstSecret Apartheid study, which used the fair housingtesting approach and documented the extent ofthe discriminatory practices. As noted, New YorkACORN followed up on the initial report, revisitinghow schools gave information after promised policychanges. When they discovered that the policies hadnot been translated into action, New York ACORNmembers turned to other strategies to addressunequal access, including filing a lawsuit under theDepartment of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Research: A second way that education organizingadds persistence to school reform efforts is throughits tradition of research and reflection, which enablescommunity members to circumvent bureaucraciesoften-used subterfuge of misinformation. In the fightto get the Montgomery Ward building torn down fornew schools, Oakland community members rejectedthe company's claim that it lacked the resources todemolish the building. Their research showed that thecompany had earned significant profits. They madethat information public, so it could not be used as anexcuse for inaction. Research and reflection also

lead to learning from experience. New YorkACORN and OCO's early experiences in establishingschools led them to develop new strategies. In estab-lishing three New York ACORN high schools, NewYork ACORN joined the movement in New Yorkto establish autonomous schools and continues torefine its relationship with its high schools. OCOmoved to the small schools campaign from a seriesof earlier initiatives that included homework clubs,charter schools, and a school within a school.

Powerful Base: A third aspect of education organizingthat generates persistence in school reform is theorganizing group's reputation through its strong baseand strategic alliances. A group's strong base of con-stituents can discourage officials from bringing upobstacles in the first place. Strategic alliances addexpertise and strengthen the organization's reputationand legitimacy to work in the education arena. OCO'sreputation as an organization that can turn out 2,000members and New York ACORN's reputation as thevoice of New York City's low-income parents wereboth widely recognized. In both cities, education-based non-profits sought out these organizationsto partner in reform because of their reputations aspowerful organizations with strong community bases.

Political WillBureaucracies, such as city government and urbanschool systems, are known for inaction, corruption,and resistance to change. The structure of accounta-bility can be diffuse, making it possible for officialsto pass responsibility off, one to another. In addition,school and public officials manage competing inter-ests, and they often act in their own best interestavoiding the risk of losing power. Three features ofeducation organizing mitigate these impediments toaction. Through community organizing, which builds"bridging" social capital, community members estab-lish relationships of trust with school and elected

35 33

34

officials. Through these relationships, they becomeaware of each other's concerns and agendas and makecommitments for follow-through. Secondly, powerfulcommunities can counter competing economic andpolitical interests, ultimately compelling officialsto act in the interests of low-income communities.Making discussions public is a third way that educa-tion organizing creates the political will that can bringbureaucracies to take action. When these discussionsare public, everyone's interests are on the table. With-out back door deals, it is more difficult to dodgeresponsibility for taking action.

The work of LSNA offers a good example of buildingpolitical will. LSNA builds on its relationships of trustto convene its member groups, including schools, tocraft a Holistic Plan. The Holistic Plan, a set of one-year goals and strategies to achieve them, is createdthrough a collective process that proceeds withseveral meetings prior to an annual convention wherethe plan is adopted. The convention draws about1000 people from LSNA's institutional members,including local schools. The process of developing theHolistic Plan puts discussions of community issues inthe public arena. The result is a widely agreed uponagenda for community improvement.

With the issue of school overcrowding on thepublic agenda in the early 1990s, LSNA was able todemonstrate it had wide agreement about the needfor facilities, which, in turn, obligated officials to takeaction. As a result, the school district committedfunds for new neighborhood school facilities. Similarto the Oakland example, gentrification pressures inthe Logan Square neighborhood threatened itsobtaining a site for one of the new middle schools.The community's power and its public commitmentsenabled LSNA to head off a last minute maneuver

on the part of the school district to sell the lot toa developer. The annexes and new middle schoolswould not have been built if those with the powerto allocate funds or designate land use had not beenmade to feel accountable to low- and moderate-income residents in Oakland or in Chicago's LoganSquare neighborhood.

Producing Authentic Change in Policiesand Programs that Reflect the Concernsof Parents and CommunityBy adding the perspectives of families and communitiesto the school reform equation, education organizingreflects the essence of the new paradigm, which valueslocal knowledge and takes into account the dynamicbetween schools and their external environment.There are four ways in which parent and communityvoices can strengthen school reform efforts: makingcurriculum more challenging and congruent withcommunity life; raising issues that otherwise wouldnot come up; revealing how schools and the commu-nity can be resources for each other; and creatingjoint ownership of schools and reform.

The bottom line for parents is that children aregetting what they need to be successful at the nextlevel of school or in life. When low-income parentsand community members become leaders and gainsophistication with education issues and politics, theyare more likely to make the kinds of demands onschools that their middle-class counterparts do. Theydemand that their children are challenged and thatthe curriculum reflects their values and culture.As a result, school reforms with strong communityengagement are likely to result in more challengingteaching that addresses students' learning needs,as well as curriculum that taps into student and

\

i2

community knowledge. Such a curriculum is moreconnected to community values and can bettersupport student achievement.

The establishment of the Young Scientists Programin Austin was an outgrowth of parents raising thequestion of whether or not teachers were preparingchildren to compete academically. Adding a com-petitive sixth-grade program increased the level ofchallenge at each of the grades feeding into it,because, as noted previously, every teacher wanted hisor her students to qualify. Community voices alsoinfluenced curriculum in Austin, where non-English-speaking parents wanted their children to learnEnglish, but also to retain their home language.Parents fought along with teachers and administratorsfor a better bilingual policy and funds for morebilingual teachers and materials.

A second way in which the addition of communityvoices contributes to reform is by raising issuesthat would not have come up otherwise and thendeveloping initiatives to address them. Both in thebeginning stages of forming an Alliance schoolpartnership and on an ongoing basis, teachers goon "neighborhood walks" paired with a communityleader. In Austin, neighborhood walks raised theproblem of high absenteeism among the childrenwhich parents connected to the lack of neighborhoodhealth services. This led to a successful campaign toestablish a health clinic at the school.

A third way in which including community voicesadds value to reform is in making the walls betweenschools and communities more permeable. Theschool becomes a resource to the community andthe community becomes a resource to the schools.LSNA offers an illustration. The Parent Mentorprogram was initiated because of the perceived needto strengthen parent involvement by both parentsand local school staff members. Subsequently, parentmentors called for community centers to provideadult education and after-school programs. Workingwith principals in neighborhood schools, LSNAobtained funding to set up six community centers.Parents who come to the community centers oftenbecome active in the school through participation inthe Parent Mentor program, on the school bilingualcommittee, as well as running for election to theLocal School Council. Parent-mentors often enterclasses at the community centers and a multi-layerednetwork of school/community relationships is built.

Finally, the addition of parent and community voicesto school reform creates joint ownership of programs,providing needed support for their continuity andeffectiveness. For example, AOP parents obtainedfunding for after-school programs to support kinder-garten and first grade students with the greatestacademic needs. They engaged teachers by askingthem to help identify students for the program andbooks for the children's home libraries. The teachersopened their classrooms to the parents, inviting theafter-school program participants to use classroommaterials such as books, computers, and games.Teachers began using the same books in their class-rooms that children were taking home. They reportedthat students in the program benefited from the home-work help they were receiving in the after-school pro-gram and from the extra social and academic attention.

The fight for a bilingual policy in Austin started withthe concerns of teachers in one school in which therewere too few placements for non-English-speakingstudents. They brought the problem to the attentionof the principal, who in turn raised parents' aware-ness. Eventually the issue reached the top of AustinInterfaith's agenda. Together parents, teachers andadministrators put pressure on school district officialsto win a new policy and funding for additionalteachers and materials.

When schools value parents' and communitymembers' knowledge and traditions, the continuitybetween students' homes and school is stronger. Itundergirds parents' ability to support their childrenand children's ability to make positive choices abouttheir own commitment to their academic pursuits.Responsiveness to community interests shapes reformin ways that make the school program more effectivein motivating and challenging students, as wellas in activating external support systems to workfor children's school success.

Moving into collaborative relationships with educa-tors creates tensions in parents' roles. While workingwith educators is critical, parents and communitymembers must not lose their power to hold theinstitution accountable. In these collaborative roles,they are working directly with education insiders.Although their goals can be the same as educators,parents must sometimes step outside of their roles ascollaborators in order to hold school officialsaccountable and to reach these goals.

37 35

VII. Challenges andRecommendations for Extendingand Supporting the Work ofCommunity OrganizingEducation organizing holds much promise forreframing school reform in the new paradigm thatconnects communities and schools. In this report, wehave explained the process by which communityorganizing works to address the problems of schoolsin low-income communities and we have offered aframework for assessing its accomplishments. Theprocess starts with building capacity for civic partici-pation in the community that leads both to newstructural and power arrangements in schools andschool systems, as well as to improved school climateand new teaching and learning practices that ulti-mately increase student achievement. Along withanother recent study by the New York University'sInstitute for Education and Social Policy,24 we havedocumented the contribution of education organizingto building the political will to improve public educa-tion for those low-income communities that ourpublic schools have failed most often. This study alsoidentifies the other ways in which community organ-izing adds value to school reform: sustaining effortsover time, persisting in the face of obstacles, andinserting parent and community voices in the dial-ogue on school reform. Although our findings pointto the successes of community organizing, it isimportant to keep in mind how hard the work ofcommunity organizing is and the many challengesthe groups face.

An experienced organizer told us that education isthe most difficult area in which his organizationworks. There are many reasons why organizing workin the field of education is so difficult. Education isembedded in social, political, and economic systemsand requires addressing education problems at a scalebig enough to influence policy. In addition, schoolsand school districts are complex and entrenchedbureaucratic institutionsnotoriously resistant tochange. The highly charged political environment ofpublic education and the diverse interests representedin the public school debate make it difficult to identifymeasures of impact that everyone can agree upon.With these challenges in mind, we make recommen-dations in this closing section for supporting and

36

extending the work of education organizing.The recommendations fall into four categories:

Building organizational capacity

Supporting school/community connections:reframing the paradigm

Expanding expertise and legitimacy

Demonstrating success

Building Organizational CapacityEducation organizing presents a set of issues thatchallenge the organizational capacity of communityorganizing groups. First, community organizinggroups that take on the challenge of working on edu-cation issues are generally small. Most of the groupshave fewer than ten people on staff and some havefewer than five. Most have budgets under $400,000.Second, staffs and budgets are stretched by the needto work on multiple levels simultaneously; on localissues at the neighborhood level to build and nurturetheir base of constituents, as well as at higher levelsin a region, school district, city, or state to effectpolicy changes. A third issue is the time it takes toachieve results. Most efforts extend over months andeven years, and the longer the time frame, the moreinevitable turnover among all of the players. Parents,district administrators, and political figures willhave come and gone. Community organizing groups'ability to hire experienced organizers and retainthem can help provide continuity, keeping the workgoing despite an unstable environment. Finally,these organizations have found that they can aug-ment their reach and impact through alliancesor coalitions with other groups. Coalitions also taketime to build.

NOTES

24. New York University's Institute for Education andSocial Policy, et al., 2001.

38

11 u "ataraN 17

What do these groups need to extend and supporttheir work? First of all, the groups need financial sup-port for the organization and its organizing activities.Adequate funding will allow these groups to:

Hire organizers to build the base of constituents

Retain skilled organizers who can make a long-term commitment to education organizing bypaying higher salaries and benefits and providingmore training

Ensure continuity in the organizing effortsthrough multi-year, long-term grants that providecore support

Demystify education concepts and terminologythrough increased access to training for parents andcommunity constituents in education issues, researchskills, and analysis of policy proposals

Gain technical assistance through partnerships withorganizations that have expertise in data collectionand interpretation, policy analysis, legal strategies,media strategies, and so forth

Increase the scale of impact and build legitimacythrough funding for the work of forming coalitionsand alliances

39

'

I

Supporting School/CommIII- 01 .11 I: I Il

Community organizing is based in a new paradigmof school reform, one in which the connectionbetween schools and communities is central to schoolchange. In this paradigm, the strengths and knowl-edge of parents and community members are essentialto transforming schools to serve the best interests offamilies in low- to moderate- income communities.To this end, organizers and community leaders seekways to build relationships with school staff toensure community input into the direction and spiritof reform. There are, however, significant barriersto achieving this kind of relationship. First, theentrenched professional culture of schools definesparents and communities as supports to professionals,rather than as collaborators in designing and carryingout children's education. Second, when parents andcommunity members gain a seat at decision-makingtables, tensions can surface between professionalsand parents/community members. When there aremultiple perspectives, conflict is predictable.

All the groups in this study grapple with the manage-ment of the contradictions inherent in the insider/outsider status they achieve. They all work towardcollaborative relationships while guarding their role

37

in holding the institution of public education account-able. Regardless of their insider status, they still useorganizing strategies, such as large turnout, accounta-bility sessions, and the power of confrontation, inorder to move the change process forward.

What can funders and educators do to support thischange process? Funders and educators can play acritical role in reframing the paradigm by promotingconnections between community organizing andschool improvement efforts. They can also reinforcethe potential for institutional change by:

Fostering links between building community capacityand school improvement by helping to connectthe program officers in their foundations that fundcommunity development and education reform

Acknowledging the importance of process measuresas well as outcome measures, using the IndicatorsFramework or other frameworks that account forthe complexity of organizing

Broaden accountability for public educationby providing incentives for educators to work withcommunity organizing groups and by conveningconferences among differently situated organizations

Recognizing the unique contributions that commu-nity and parent participation bring to school reform

Normalizing the tensions and conflict that are partof building collaborations

Expanding Expertise and LegitimacyIn order to have influence at any level, communityorganizing groups must become "players" in theeducation sphere. To do so, however, they mustconfront a number of challenges to establishing rela-tionships with education professionals. For one thing,the professional paradigm creates and maintainsboundaries through the use of specialized knowledgeand language. As a result, community members andparents who lack such knowledge are excluded andtheir contributions are under-appreciated. In addition,community organizing groups need to be perceived as"legitimate" in order to form collaborative relationswith school staff and other school reform groups,and to compete for funding with other education-focused non-profits.

One way in which many community organizing groupscompensate for their lack of education expertise is topartner with organizations that have this kind of

38

knowledge. Through these partnerships, communityorganizing groups receive technical assistance, knowl-edge of education issues, and research services. Theyalso receive assistance and expertise that can helpthem to look at data and identify the problems ofschools and school systems, leading to strategic deci-sions about organizing campaigns to address theseproblems. They also build their legitimacy throughassociation with coalitions and allies that link them toa larger movement. Other intermediary organizationsalso help community organizing groups enhance theirknowledge and skills by providing occasions fordialogue and shared experiences and lessons throughnational conferences and cross-site visits.

How can community organizing groups gain greateraccess to resource and technical assistance groupswith specialized education knowledge? To supportstrategic assistance, funders can:

Facilitate networking among groups doing relatedor complementary work by sponsoring conferences,cross-site visits, partnerships, and other forums

Develop and/or increase the capacity of resourceand technical assistance groups to provide training,research services, data analysis, and so forth

Sponsor training, led by resource and/or technicalassistance groups, for organizers and communityconstituents

Provide media training, so that groups can becomemore skilled at using the media effectively tocommunicate their messages

Ai,gr4.0

S'40

Documenting SuccessThe Indicators Project started with a small group offunders and school reform activists who believed thatif community organizing for school reform was to becredible, then a methodology needed to be developedto document its accomplishments and show how theseaccomplishments contributed to student learning.This report has presented such a methodology.

We end this report by drawing attention to theimportance of this kind of documentation and its useas a means for reaching out beyond the "alreadyconvinced" to funders and educators who do not seeand/or understand the role of community organizingin school reform.

For a number of reasons, the work of communityorganizing for school reform is often invisible.Community organizing groups operate on the prin-ciple of "power before programs." Their emphasis ison holding otherselected officials and school districtadministratorsaccountable. As a result, credit fornew programs often goes to those officials or to thosewho implement the programs and not to the organ-izing group. The principle of power before programsalso means that community organizing focuses ondeveloping leaders and building community powerintermediate but critical accomplishments, as thetheory of change in this study shows.

Another factor that makes it difficult to see theimpact of community organizing is that organizing isan ongoing process seeking to transform relationshipsand institutions. These kinds of cultural changes occurover many years of work, and hence there is no neatbeginning, middle, and end. Organizers capture thesephenomena in their expression "all organizing isreorganizing," acknowledging that organizing is acontinuous process.

The change process makes the work of communityorganizing difficult to measure. It is often difficult tohave enough distance to recognize the significance ofearlier outcomes that did not look important initiallyor were actually disappointing; the tendency is to focuson the significance of later, more impressive outcomes.Furthermore, community organizing groups, alreadystretched by what they are trying to accomplish, donot have the capacity to document their own worksystematically and need the support of externalresearchers who have credibility with funders andthe public.

How can funders further research and documentation?There are two primary ways. First, funders can pro-vide support for research that deepens understandingof community organizing and that measures theaccomplishments of these groups, both at interme-diate points in the process of change and when thereare outcomes for schools and students. Such measuresshould be sensitive to:

The complexity of the process and context of change

The extended time frame of change

The importance of outcomes in communitycapacity (i.e., changes in leadership and levels ofcommunity participation) as well as changes inschools (i.e., in areas such as school climate andcurriculum and instruction)

Secondly, funders can provide support for taking theresearch to broader audiences through such venues as:

Academic conferences and journals

Settings to which new funders have been invited tolearn about community organizing

Education conferences and journals

The media

Concluding Comments: The Power ofOrdinary PeopleAnecdotal evidence had led a group of funders andschool reform activists associated with the Cross CityCampaign to believe that community organizing pro-vided a crucial missing element in school reformastrong grassroots demand to make public educationwork for the children of low- to moderate-incomefamilies. This group of funders and activists neededsystematic evidence of the accomplishments of educa-tion organizing.

This study responds to that need. We offer a method-ology that funders, community organizing groups,and educators can use to understand both the inter-mediate and long-term results of education organizing.This methodology accounts for the influences of thesocial, economic, and political environments in whichcommunity organizing takes place and the complex-ity of changing large, bureaucratic institutions. Wehighlight the importance of the work of communityorganizing to build community power, political will,and public accountability in order to redress powerimbalances that for too long have maintained an

41 39

educational disadvantage for children from low- tomoderate-income communities.

The problems of large urban school systems arewidespread and complicated. Funders, reformers, andgrassroots groups all agree that there is a critical needfor change on a large scale. One critique of communityorganizing as a significant force for improving urbanschools has been that these groups are not workingat a large enough scale to influence policy. We havefound, however, that as community organizing groupsestablish themselves over time as players in educationreform, they build partnerships, alliances, and coali-tions that can have an impact at a large scale.

We also found, moreover, that these groups build crit-ical links between policy changes and on-the-groundrealities. Their achievements at the local levelthedevelopment of education leaders among parents,teachers, and administrators and the strengthening ofschool/community connectionsare crucial parts ofturning policy into reality through strong implemen-tation. Community organizing groups also build thecapacity of local communities to hold public officialsaccountable for the implementation of the policiesthey pass, so that these policies will translate intoreal improvements for the students they are intendedto benefit. The local aspects of "policy work"building public demand for new policies along withthe human capacity to carry out those policiesaretoo often overlooked. The absence of this local workcan explain why many strong school reform plansare never realized.

In summary, we are in agreement with those who sayschools cannot do it alone. We argue that the domi-nant discourse on school reform, which focuses onwhat happens inside schools and school systems, isnot sufficient. This discourse needs to be broadened

40

to include both what happens inside schools andwhat happens in communities, and the dynamicbetween them.

To end this report, we turn to a story about Chicago,the location of the story that opened this report.Writing about a 1989 trip to Chicago, the historianMichael B. Katz described his amazement uponhearing that state law had radically decentralized thecity's school system, giving parents and communitymembers a significant hand in running their localschools. His previous studies of the history of Amer-ican education had led him to understand that thedominant form in public schoolingprofessionalizedand bureaucraticwas not inevitable. Before bureau-cratized forms came to dominate American education,they had once vied with a more democratic approach.From his historian's perspective, Katz wonderedif he was witnessing a momentous turn of events."Hardly a detached observer, I wanted to know ifthe course of school reform would sustain my faithin the capacity of ordinary people to manage theirschools and in the liberating effects of sheddingbureaucratic weight."25

In this study, we have shown that when ordinarypeople enter into the education arena their effortsresult in meaningful gains for students who have notbeen well-served by the public schools. Ordinarypeople can indeed begin to transform the institutionof public education to become more equitableand responsive.

NOTFS

25. Michael B. Katz, Improving Poor People: The WelfareState, the "Underclass," and Urban Schools as History,p. 100. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

42

A,1.

Alliance Organizing ProjectThe Alliance Organizing Project (AOP) is a single-issue organizing group focused on making parents andfamilies full partners in school reform AOP was theidea of a number of advocacy groups concerned withthe lack of parent and community participation inschool reform and was initiated in 1995 as part ofPhiladelphia's Children Achieving reform plan. DuringChildren Achieving, AOP organizers worked in 30 ofthe district's 260 schools as well as citywide.

Over the course of the past six years, the number ofAOP organizers has fluctuated depending on itsfunding. As of spring 2001, AOP had a racially andethnically diverse staff, which included an ExecutiveDirector, Assistant Director, one full-time organizer,and two part-time organizers. The Executive andAssistant Directors form a team with one white andone African-American member. The group of organ-izers included a white, an African-American, and aLatina. The entire staff was female. The full and part-time organizers were parents or grandparents withchildren in the public schools. They have come upthrough the AOP ranks, first as members of school-based Parent Leadership Teams and representatives

4111,

11,

2

and/or leaders of the AOP citywide, then as internorganizers and now as professional organizers. Thedevelopment of parents into organizers reflects AOP'scommitment to being a parent-led organization.

In spring 2001, the organizers were working in sevenschools, five elementary and two middle schools.The work in the middle schools is the most recent,and the intent is to continue to organize up throughthe feeder high schools. At each of the schools, theorganizer works intensely with a Parent LeadershipTeam of six to twelve volunteer parents. AOP alsoworks citywide on issues related to teacher vacanciesand teacher quality, with a focus on the schools inthe lowest income neighborhoods.

Even though AOP was part of Children Achieving,Philadelphia's systemic reform program from 1995-2000, an independent Board has always governedit. The Board originally consisted of two co-chairsand other members representing the advocacy groupsthat helped to create AOP. Today the Board isprimarily made up of parents and community mem-bers from the schools and neighborhoods whereAOP is active, with the two co-chairs remaining toprovide continuity.

Austin InterfaithAustin Interfaith is an affiliate of the Southwest

Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) Network, founded

in the mid-1970s. Austin Interfaith, founded in 1985,

is a multi-issue coalition of forty-five religious congre-

gations, schools, and other institutions. It is one of

the most diverse of the Texas IAF affiliates in its

membership, ranging across religious denominations,economic levels, neighborhoods, and ethnic groups. In

addition to its work with a network of public schools,

the Alliance School Project, Austin Interfaith works in

such other areas as job training, youth employment,

and adult education. While its member congregations

are geographically distributed throughout Austin,

many of the schools with which it works are on the

East side of Austin and have significant numbers of

I

low-income African-American, Asian and Hispanicstudents (although in some of the schools, less than

60 percent of the students are eligible for free lunch,

and these schools, therefore, do not qualify for

Title I funds).

Austin Interfaith staff includes a Lead Organizer

and two other full-time professional organizers.

The staff is ethnically and racially diverse. The Lead

Organizer is a white female and one organizer is an

African-American male, the other a Hispanic female.

Its co-chairs, a group of twelve leaders from among

the member institutions, govern the organization.

Agendas are also set through a collective leadership

group (leaders from across member institutions) and

an annual delegate assembly that draws hundreds

of constituents.

44

,

.10

Logan Square Neighborhood AssociationLogan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) is amulti-issue organization whose work is guided by aHolistic Plan which includes improving local publicschools, developing youth leadership, enhancingneighborhood safety, maintaining affordable housing,and revitalizing the local economy. The Core Committeeand issues committees revise the plan on a yearlybasis. It is approved by the membership of the organi-zation, which includes both individuals and represen-tatives of forty-seven neighborhood organizations.

LSNA was started in the early 1960s by a groupof local churches, businesses, and homeowners toaddress neighborhood concerns arising from rapidsuburbamzation and deindustrialization of the Chicagometropolitan area. Around the time of LSNA's forma-tion, longtime residents of Logan Square, primarilyworking-class families of European descent, wereleaving the neighborhood, and new residents wereattracted to it, originally Cubans and then PuertoRican families from nearby Humboldt Park Since

I

then, the neighborhood has become increasinglyLatino, mostly of Mexican, Puerto Rican, andCentral American heritage According to the 2000census, Latinos made up 65.1percent of LoganSquare's population.

Changing demographics of Logan Square are reflectedin the changing demographics of LSNA leaders andmembers. In the late 1980s, LSNA's Board, whichhad been predominantly Anglo, made an explicitcommitment to diversify and to hire a new directorcommitted to building a racially and economicallydiverse organization. This diversity is represented inLSNA's Executive Committee, which, in the spring of2000, was composed of the chairperson of LSNA'shome daycare network, three former parent mentorswho now participate in governance, instruction,and other volunteer activities at their schools, a localschool administrator, and a local banker. The six-member committee consisted of four Latinas andtwo Anglo men.

Vf

ico

New York ACORNACORN, the Association of Community Organ-izations for Reform Now, was founded in 1970. Itemerged from the National Welfare Rights Organ-ization and expanded its constituency to includemoderate-income and working poor families.According to its website, ACORN has grown tobecome "the nation's largest community organizationof low- and moderate-income families, with over100,000 member families organized into 500 neigh-borhood chapters in forty cities across the country."ACORN is a multi-issue organization whose work,both nationally and at the local level, centers aroundaffordable housing, living wages for low-wage work-ers, increasing investment by banks and governmentsin low-income communities, and improving publicschools. ACORN's approach includes "direct action,negotiation, legislation, and voter participation."Funding comes from annual dues from memberfamilies, fundraising events, and foundation grants.ACORN members participate in a national conventionevery other year that focuses on a particular issue ofinterest to the organization. The Philadelphia conven-tion in June 2000 focused on predatory lending.

New York ACORN was founded in 1981. Its mem-bership comes from across the city, primarily fromneighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, the South Bronx,and Washington Heights/Harlem. Its over 22,000members are a cross section of those neighborhoods,mostly African-American, Afro-Caribbean, PuertoRican, and Dominican. Its members are residents inhalf of the thirty-two New York City communityschool districts.

The Schools Office of New York ACORN wasfounded in 1988 to forward members' growinginterest in education issues. The staff of the SchoolsOffice consists of an organizer assigned to each ofthe three ACORN High Schools and two full-timesenior staff who support the work of the organizers.The Schools Office is responsible for the ACORNHigh Schools as well as the citywide campaigns.Other ACORN staff members also support thesewider campaigns. A citywide committee of parentsprovides oversight to the Schools Office. New YorkACORN as a whole is governed by an ExecutiveCommittee. New York ACORN shares its Brooklynoffice with the National ACORN Schools Office.

Oakland Community OrganizationsThe Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) hasbeen active in Oakland for nearly thirty years, andhas been affiliated since its inception with the PacificInstitute for Community Organizing (PICO), a nation-wide network of similar groups. In the beginning,OCO's membership was built through recruitment ofindividuals from low-income neighborhoods. However,a dozen years ago, OCO shifted from a neighborhoodorganizing approach to a "faith-based, institutional or-ganizing model," an approach in which congregationsare the members of OCO and individuals participatethrough their membership in one of the member con-gregations. Each congregation has a "local organizingcommittee" made up of OCO volunteer leaders.

As of fall 2000, OCO had 35 member congregationsrepresenting over 30,000 families from East, West, andNorth Oakland. For the most part, these congrega-tions are located in the Oakland flatlands, which arelow- to moderate-income neighborhoods. The majorityof the population in these neighborhoods is Latinoand African-American; some Asian groups, such asFilipinos and Vietnamese, as well as a small numberof Caucasians, are also represented. The shift to faith-

based organizing was significant in diversifying OCO'sbase racially, ethnically, and economically.

OCO staff in Spring 2000 included an ExecutiveDirector, three full-time professional organizers, andone professional organizer shared with the Bay AreaCoalition of Equitable Schools (BayCES), as well assupport staff. The staff is racially and ethnicallydiverse: the Executive Director is white, the organizersinclude two Latinos and one African-American; andthe organizer shared with BayCES is white. A Boardof Directors representing member congregationsgoverns OCO. Two parent/community leaders, anAfrican-American man and a Latina, are co-chairsof the Board

The organization works on multiple issues, includingaffordable housing, crime prevention and safety, drugabuse prevention, and education. The organizingfocus is on developing neighborhood leadership andcivic participation for the purpose of leveragingresources for Oakland flatlands neighborhoods. Itseducation organizing began in the early 1990s, first inneighborhood schools, but has expanded to district,city, and state levels.

45

Appendix 3

Locations of Community Organizing Groups

School reform organizing groups identified in the Education Organizing Database developed

by the Cross City Campaign and Research for Action (146)

NYU institute_far Fducation and Social Policy Organizing for School Reform Research Initiative,

_ 8 sites-66_ groups

SOURCE

New York University's Institute for Education and Social Policy, et al, 2001, p. 7

CO

46

4

Washington DC

Appendix C

Characteristics of the 19 Telephone Survey Groups

Table I: Distribution & Affiliation of the Community Organizing Groups

Organization Name

LOCATION AFFILIATION

State Urban Rural

NationalNetwork Independent University

All Congregations Together LA PICO

Alliance Organizing Project PA

Austin Interfaith TX IAF

Blocks Together IL NPA

Bronx ACORN NY 0 ACORN

challenge West Virginia WV

I ogan Square Neighborhood Association IL

I owell Alliance for Families and Neighborhoods MA

Metro New York NY IAF

Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH) WI Gamaliel

Mothers on the Move (MOM) NY

Oakland ACORN CA ACORN

Oakland Community Organizations CA PICO

People Acting for Community Together FL DART

Powerful Schools WA

Program for Academic and Cultural Enhancementof Rural Schools (PACFRS)

AL

San Diego Organizing Project CA PICO

Southeast Fdiication Task Force MD

Southern Fcho MS

Summary 16 3 10 7 2

Table II: Age and Constituency of the Community Organizing Groups

Organization Name

AGE IN YEARS CONSTITUENCY

<3 3-5 6-10 >11

African-American Latino Caucasian Other

All Congregations Together

Alliance Organizing Project

Austin Interfaith

Blocks Together

Bronx ACORN o a

Challenge West Virginia

I ogan Square Neighborhood Association

I owell Alliance for Families and Neighborhoods

Metro New York

Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH)

Mothers on the Move (MOM)

Oakland ACORN

Oakland Community Organizations 5

People Acting for Community Together

Powerful SchoolsProgram for Academic and Cultural Enhancementof Rural Schools (PACFRS)

San Diego Organizing Project

Southeast Friiiration Task Force

Southern Fs-ho

SLIMMa0/ 1 4 6 8 14 13 13 5

49 `331F,g1T.' COIT7 AVATI111311,147

0z

48

Table III: Focus, Scale & Scope of the Work of the Community Organizing Groups

Organization Name

FOCUS SCALE SCOPE

Multi-Issue

SingleIssues

SchoolsNeighbor-

hoods

CityRegionDistrict State

School

Change

PolicyChangeDist./ST

All Congregations Together

Alliance Organizing Project

Austin Interfaith

Blocks Together .Bronx ACORN

Challenge West Virginia

1 oan Square Neighborhood Association

1 owell Alliance for Families and Neighborhoods

Metro New York

Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH)

Mothers on the Move (MOM)

Oakland ACORN

Oakland Community Organizations

People Acting for Community Together

Powerful SchoolsProgram for Academic and Cultural Enhancementof Rural Schools (PACFRS)

San Diego Organizing Project

Southern Echo

Summary 14 5 13 12 4 11 16

Table IV: Staffing & Funding Levels of the Community Organizing Groups

Organization Name

STAFF FUNDING

<5 5-10 >10100,000-250,000

251,000-400,000

401,000-900,000

All Congregations Together

Alliance Organizing Project

Austin Interfaith

Blocks Together

Bronx ACORN

Challenge West Virginia

1 ogan Square Neighborhood Association*

1 ()well Alliance for Families and Neighborhoods

Metro New York

Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH)

Mothers on the Move (MOM)

Oakland ACORN

Oakland Community Organizations

People Acting for Community Together

Powerful Schools*Program for Academic and Cultural Enhancementof Rural Schools (PACFRS)**

. D -:* :.4 1: ' io

Southeast Frliication Task Force

Southern Echo

Summary 6 11 2 9 7 3

*Logan Square & Powerful Schools support significant program budgets.

*It is likely that many "staff" receive university salaries. t-0L,:iEB`")r (1:377 AVARIABIL.

Appendix D

Indicators Project NationalAdvisory Group

Henry Allen" Lucy Ruiz'"HYAMS FOUNDATION ALLIANCE ORGANIZING PROJECT

Drew Astolfi" Minerva Camarena Skeith"AUSTIN INTERFAITH

Leah Meyer Austin"W.K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION Rochelle Nichols Solomon"

Joseph Colletti"UNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

Oralia Garza de Cortes',"INDUSTRIAL AREAS FOUNDATION

Cyrus Driver"FORD FOUNDATION

Fred Fre low"

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

Zoe Gillett'CHARLES STEWART MOTT FOUNDATION

Paul Heckman',"UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Tammy Johnson"APPLIED RESEARCH CENTER

Steve Kest',"

ACORN

Pauline Lipman"DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

Gabriel Medel'PARENTS FOR UNITY

Hayes Mizell'"EDNA MCCONNELL CLARK FOUNDATION

Janice Petrovich'FORD FOUNDATION

Amanda Rivera"AMES MIDDLE SCHOOL

Gary Rodwell'

Cross City Campaign Staff

Chris Brown

Anne C. Hallett

Lupe Prieto

Research for Action Staff

Eva Gold

Elaine Simon

I Phase one Advisory Group member

II Phase two Advisory Group member

1

51

(

50

Appendix E

The Education OrganizingIndicators Framework

The Education Organizing Indicators Frameworkincludes eight areas in which community organizingfor school reform makes a significant contribution.We have organized these areas into charts (see below)that illustrate the work of community organizing ineach of the areas: Leadership Development,

Equity

Community Power, Social Capital, Public Account-ability, Equity, School/Community Connection, SchoolClimate, and High Quality Instruction and Curriculum.

In each indicator area there are three to fiveprimary strategies. The charts list representativeorganizing strategies under each, results from thesestrategies, and data sources that could be usedto document the results. Here we use an excerpt fromthe chart for Equity to illustrate how to readthe charts.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Increase funding and resources tounder-resourced schools

Campaigns for new buildings and renovations to reduceovercrowding and increase safety

Make the case for and win allocation of funds for adulteducation and after-school programs

Write grants to raise private and public funds forschools and/or reform groups to provide teacherprofessional development.

New school facilities, buildings, and annexes

Increased money for lighting, crossing guards,playgrounds, etc.

Increased professional development opportunitiesfor teachers

DATA SOURCES

School District facilities and personnel budgetsNeighborhood/city/District crime incident reports

Grant proposalsSurvey of school buildings and related facilitiesSurvey of parents and teachersSchool schedules and programs

52

In the column on the left, in bold, is a primary strategythat community organizing groups use to addressequity: Increase funding and resources to under-resourced schools. Listed below the primary strategyare three representative strategies that communityorganizing groups use to increase funding: they wagecampaigns for new buildings and renovations, makethe case for funds for adult education and after-schoolprograms, and/or write grants to increase fundingfor teacher professional development.

In the right column, we provide examples of theresults of these efforts: new school construction andrenovations, increased numbers of crossing guards,improved lighting and safer playgrounds, and increasedprofessional development opportunities for teachers.In our visits to community organizing groups theypointed out new and updated facilities, and we heardfrom parents and teachers that accidents and inci-dences in the school vicinity had decreased. At anumber of sites we talked to principals and teachersrefreshed by new professional development experi-ences, which they connected to the efforts made bycommunity organizing groups. They had new visionsfor their schools and/or were enthusiastic about newapproaches they were trying in their classrooms.

Listed beneath the Strategies and Results columnsare sources for systematically documenting results,including school, city and neighborhood recordsas well as surveys, district data, interviewsand observations.

We constructed the Education Organizing IndicatorsFramework through interviews with nineteen groupsin which we asked them about their strategies andaccomplishments and refined it through case studieswith five of the groups. Although the Frameworkillustrates the work of education organizing in eachof the indicator areas, it is not to be used as a check-list, nor to prescribe what a community organizinggroup ought to be doing. It is important to start withthe actual stories of education organizing, lettingthe indicator areas serve as a lens for interpretingthem. The Framework is a means to categorize theaccomplishments of a groupa tool that can helpcommunity organizing groups make sense of their

efforts to broader audiences and to help these audi-ences understand the role of community organizingin improving schools.

Even though the strategies and results in theFramework reflect the successes of the nineteengroups, the Framework is not inclusive of the totalityof community organizing for school reform. Boththe groups we studied and new groups will want toadd strategies to existing indicator areas and perhapseven add new areas to the Framework that we didnot uncover during our research. The Framework ismeant to grow with the field.

Foundation program officers, educators, and organ-izers and leaders of community organizing groupsall should find the Framework useful. Foundationprogram officers, for example, can use it to addressthe question, How can I know that community organ-izing for school reform is making a difference? TheFramework should help funders: to become moreknowledgeable about the work in general; to considerfunding requests by using the indicator areas as a wayof understanding the work of groups applying forsupport; to help identify the accomplishments of com-munity organizing groups and the areas in which theirwork is focused; and to help interpret the work ofa community organizing group in terms of the scaleat which a group is working. Educators' questionsdiffer from that of funders. Educators may be inter-ested in knowing: How can community organizingfor school reform help me and what difference doescommunity organizing make for schools and students?The Framework should help educators: to becomemore knowledgeable about the work in general; tounderstand where the work of community organizingoverlaps with and/or is complementary to their ownefforts; to understand the areas in which communityorganizing is working that educators, themselves,cannot. Organizers and leaders have yet other ques-tions. They want to know, How can I do this workbetter and how can I communicate better to audiencesnot familiar with community organizing? The Frame-work should be useful to leaders and organizers:in establishing a common language to describe theirwork and as a tool for reflection on their efforts.

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The Education OrganizingIndicators Framework

Leadership D_ev_elapmentLeadership Development builds the knowledgeand skills of parents and community members(and sometimes teachers, principals and students)to create agendas for school improvement.

Leadership development is personally empowering,as parents and community members take on publicroles. Leaders heighten their civic participation andsharpen their skills in leading meetings, interviewingpublic officials, representing the community at publicevents and with the media, and negotiating withthose in power.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Identify and train parents and community members1

(and sometimes teachers principals, and students) totake on leadership roles

Develop parent and community knowledge base throughtrainings, research, reflection, and evaluation

Provide opportunities for parents and community membersto attend conferences, make cross-site school visits, etc.

Create opportunities and training for parents and commu-nity members to be organizational leaders, to be leaders onlocal school councils, principal selection committees, etc.

Develop parents (and community members, teachers

Parents and/or community members hold leadership positions

Parents and community members hold positions inorganization's governance and/or are organizersin community organizing groups

Parents and community members feel knowledgeableabout their role in school reform and in the process formaking change

1 .. . , . . , . .. . 1 :ed citizens

Develop the skills of civic engagement (e.g., public speakingresearch, negotiation, reflection, and evaluation)

Hold public accountability sessions with elected leaders andreflect/evaluate power dynamics afterwards

Organize get-out-the-vote and/or withhold-the-vote campaigns

Promote individual, family, and community

Parents, youth, and school staff demonstrate confidenceand ability in leading meetings, designing agendas, publicspeaking, etc.

Politicians are aware of issues that concern parents,youth, and school staff and are responsive to them

Parents, youth, and school staff demonstrateknowledge about school systems and the ability tomake strategic decisions

--)

) empsmatermnt

Support in setting individual educational and career goals

Coaching in public speaking, letter writing, petitioning, etc.

Training in organizing skills (e.g., how to do oneon-ones, house meetings, active listening, reflection,and evaluation)

Creating learning experiences (e.g., training, conferences,site visits, etc.)

Parents, students, teachers, etc. perceive themselves asgaining knowledge, confidence, and skills

Parents, students, teachers demonstrate increasing skill inorganizing and confidence in leadership capacity

Parents are pursing their own education and/oremployment opportunities

Observation of organizational andpublic eventsMedia coverage of parent and community leadershipin school reform and in community change

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys of parents, students, teachersStories about personal change

5 4

Cornm_u Pow_erCommunity Power means that residents of low-incomeneighborhoods gain influence to win the resourcesand policy changes needed to improve their schoolsand neighborhoods. Community power emerges when

groups act strategically and collectively. Powerfulcommunity groups build a large base of constituents,form partnerships for legitimacy and expertise,and have the clout to draw the attention of politicalleaders and the media to their agenda.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Create a mass base constituency within communities

that results in deep membership commitment and

large turnout

2

3

3

Identify shared community and parent self- interest through Ability to turn-out membership baseone-on-ones, house meetings, school based teams, and Public leaders perceive groups as a political playercongregation based committees

Group is perceived as an authentic community voice withinEnsure that community interests drive community organizing the community and by district and political leadersthrough member participation in organizational leadershipand governance Ability to sustain a campaign overtime

Form partnerships for legitimacy and expertise

Establish mutually beneficial working relations with other Other groups perceive the community organizinggroups with shared interests (e.g., school reform groups, groups as a valuable partners representing aother community-based groups, a teachers' union, aca- grassroots constituencydemic, and other groups that can provide technical Community organizing groups, with partners, gain a seatassistance, etc.) at policy decision-making tablesWork in coalition at city and state levels aroundcommon issues

Encourage collaboration among neighborhood schools,social service agencies, and congregations

Create a strong organizational identity

Develop stories of leadership and success Leaders, members, and organizers share a stock of stories

Practice reflection and evaluation leading to shared sense of that create a history of their accomplishments

accomplishments and next steps Parents and community members see their values and con-

Document successes through packets of media clippings, etc. cerns guiding the organizing

Media coverage reflects the work and accomplishments ofcommunity organizing to school reform

Draw political attention to the organization's agenda

Research issues and report findings in written Political and district leaders acknowledge issues important toand oral reports that are accessible to the media and community organizing groups, meet with members andgeneral public show up for accountability sessions

Hold one-on-ones with politicians and district leaders Media acknowledges role of community organizing group in

a Hold accountability sessions with public leaders school reform and its influence on policy

Letter writing, petitioning, and lobbying

Interviews/surveys of politicians and district leadersDATA SOURCES "Stories" about the groups

Attendance records of public events Group documents, newsletters, etc

Media coverage Observations of public events

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SodaLC4talSocial Capital refers to networks of mutual obligationand trust, both interpersonal and inter-group, that canbe activated to leverage resources to address commu-nity concerns. Some groups call this "relational"power while others describe this process as one ofbuilding "political capital." Beginning with relation-ships among neighborhood residents and within localinstitutions, community organizing groups bring

together people who might not otherwise associatewith each other, either because of cultural and lan-guage barriers (e.g., Latinos, African-Americans, andAsian-Americans) or because of their different rolesand positions, such as teachers, school board members,and parents. Creating settings for these "bridgingrelationships" in which issues are publicly discussedis the key to moving a change agenda forward.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Build networks]

Organize and support parents at school level andacross schools

Build school/community education committees

Foster principal groups

Form citywide alliances

Build relationships of mutual trust and reciprocity

Turn-out composed of multiple constituencies and representdifferent racial/ethnic/linguistic groups

Parents and students at local schools perceive they cancount on larger group membership for support

Reduced feelings of isolation

2

Increase the interaction between teachers and parents(e.g., home visits, neighborhood walks, joint planning fornew programs and/or schools, co-decision-making)

Strengthen the connection between local congregations andschools by identifying complementary roles

Increase participation in civic life

Increased perception of teachers/school staff andparents/students of mutual support

Teachers and principals perceive community groups andcongregations as advocates and resources

3

Support parent, youth, and community involvement inthe political process (e.g., petitions, letter writing, meetingwith public officials, testimony at school board meetings,get-out-the-vote campaigns, etc.)

Sponsor public accountability sessions with elected, district,and other civic leaders

Support parents holding positions on school committees,community boards, etc.

Parents and community members are spokespeoplefor the groups

Increase participation of parents, community members, andstudents on school committees, community boards, andother voluntary activities and institutions in their neighbor-hoods (e.g., clubs, religious congregation, social action, etc.)

Observation and attendance records of publicmeetings and eventsRecords of voter turnout, petitiondrives, etc.

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys of parents, students and school staff,political and district leaders

6

Rub] i cAcco u ntab it ity

Public Accountability entails a broad acknowledge-ment of and commitment to solving the problemsof public education. It is built on the assumptionthat public education is a collective responsibility.Community organizing groups work to create publicsettings for differently-positioned school stake-holderseducators, parents, community members,

elected and other public officials, the private and non-profit sectors, and students themselvesto identifyproblems and develop solutions for improving schoolsin low- to moderate-income communities. Throughthis public process, community organizing groupshold officials accountable to respond to the needs oflow- to moderate-income communities.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Create a public conversation about public educationand student achievement

Identify shared parent concerns through one-on-oneinterviews and house meetings

Create a shared vision of reform among parents, teachers,and administrators through site visits, neighborhood walks,local school councils, etc.

Create pressure for release of school data

Hold public meetings with district and elected officials

Monitor programs and policies

Increase in public dialogue about issues facing schools inlow-income neighborhoods and about parent concerns

Media coverage of inequities

District data on schools and student performancebecome public

The roles of parents and community expand from problemidentification to problem solving and monitoring results

2

Conduct studies which show whether district is delivering onpromises for new, high level courses

Bring legal action to force compliance with federal civilrights law

Push for shared decision-making and participation on localschool councils

Serve on citizen review boards

Participate in the political arena3

Engage in one-on-ones with candidates and elected officials

Develop education campaigns and petition drives

Hold accountability sessions with elected and other officials

Organize get-out-the-vote and/or withhold-the-vote campaigns

Create joint ownership/relational culture

Development of vocal community groups

Elected officials feel accountable to local groups forpublic education

Strategic use of the vote around school issues

Create and/or participate in structures (local school councils,core teams, etc.) that bring school staff, parents, and stu-dents together as school leaders and co-decision-makers

Develop community-wide planning procedures (e.g.,education committees with teachers, parents, administrators,and community members)

School staff, parents, and community groups see themselvesas collaborators in children's school experience and feelmutually accountable for student learning

Parents feel knowledgeable about schools andschool systems

Teachers feel knowledgeable about local families, thecommunity, and their educational goals and expectationsfor their children

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys of parents, teachers, administrators,and elected officialsMinutes and attendance records of public events,school committees, etc.

Media reportsObservation of events, meetings, etc.Research studies produced by the groups

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EquityEquity guarantees that all children, regardless of socio-economic status, race or ethnicity, have the resourcesand opportunities they need to become stronglearners, to achieve in school, and to succeed in thework world. Often, providing equitable opportunitiesrequires more than equalizing the distribution of

resources. Community organizing groups push forresource allocation that takes into account povertyand neglect, so that schools in low-income areasreceive priority. In addition, groups work to increasethe access of students from these schools to strongacademic programs.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Increase funding and resources to1

i under-resourced schools

Campaigns for new buildings and renovations to reduceovercrowding and increase safety

Make the case for and win allocation of funds for adulteducation and after-school programs

Write grant proposals to raise private and public fundsfor schools and/or reform groups to provide teacherprofessional development.

Maximize access of low-income children to

New school facilities buildings and annexes

Increased money for: lighting, crossing guards,playgrounds, etc.

Increased professional development opportunitiesfor teachers

educational opportunities

Increase focus on reading through reading campaigns andprograms such as Links to Literacy, etc.

Establish small autonomous schools and autonomoushigh schools

Match teaching and learning conditions with those in

Increased resources (books, professional development, etc.)to support reading and children reading more both in schooland at home

New small schools open

Autonomous high schools established offering new options

--)

) the best schools

Document absence of academic courses

Site visits to identify "best" practices

Support salary increases for teachers andreduced class size.

New incentives in place to attract and retain teachers

Improved adult-child ratios in classrooms

Higher level courses offered

DATA SOURCES

School district facilities and personnel budgetsNeighborhood/city/District crime incident reports

Grant proposalsSurvey of school buildings and related facilitiesSurvey of parents and teachersSchool schedules and programs

5856

S choolLCom nimaity ConnectionSchool/Community Connection requires that schoolsbecome institutions that work with parents and thecommunity to educate children. Such institutionalchange requires that professionals value the skills andknowledge of community members. In this model,

parents and local residents serve as resources forschools and schools extend their missions to becomecommunity centers offering the educational, socialservice, and recreational programs local residents needand desire.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Create multi-use school buildings]

Create support for schools being used as places for adultand child learning and recreation (e.g., GED and ESL classes,family counseling, after-school programs, health clinics, etc.)

Increase use of school during non-school hours(e.g., evening meetings of parents and community groups)

Position the community as a resource

Greater number and variety of community-orientedprograms in the school

Greater use of the school building as a public space

Campaigns to support school reform (e.g., new smallschools and new resources [books, computers, etc.])

After-school programs are parent- and community-led

Create new roles for parents (e.g., parents as after-schoolteachers and classroom mentors)

Create multiple_roles_for_pareriis in schools

School staff perceive community participation as addingvalue to the school

Increased awareness of school staff to community issues andthe assets of a community

3

Provide resources and training for parents to enable them totake on leadership roles (e.g., on local school councils,school improvement committees, small school design teams,hiring committees, bilingual committees, etc.)

Create joint ownership of schools and school

Increase in the variety of roles parents take on in schools

Parents feel welcome, valued, and respected in the school

I'-' decic ionrria king

Advocate for joint parent-teacher professional development,partnerships to address mutual concerns (e.g., safety,bilingual education, overcrowding)

Push for site-based decision-making that includes teachers,parents, and principal in the process

Increase in number of programs/schools that result fromparent, teacher, community, principal collaboration

Parents, teachers, and principal share language and visionfor schools

Parents are knowledgeable about academic, personnel,and school policy issues and school staff are knowledgeableabout and/or participate in community group and itseducation reform campaigns

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys with parents, school staff, organizationsSchool roster of activitiesObservations of activities at the school

Media account of community involvement inschool reformSchool and community newsletters

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Positive School aimatePositive School Climate is a basic requirement forteaching and learning. It is one in which teachers feelthey know their students and families well, and inwhich there is mutual respect and pride in the school.Community organizing groups often begin their

organizing for school improvement by addressingsafety in and around the school and the need forimproved facilities. Reducing school and class size isanother way in which community organizing groupsseek to create positive school climates.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Improve facilities

Get funds allocated for new and renovated school buildingsand playgrounds

School beautification and cleanliness campaigns

Improve safety in and around the school

Parents, teachers, and community members feel pridein school

New buildings and annexes

.flWork to improve traffic patterns in school areas, lighting, etc.

Increase crossing guards and create community-sponsoredadult patrols in school area

Increase parent presence in halls and classrooms

Create respectful school environment

Reduced number of traffic accidents and incidents

Reduced number of violent, drug, and/or gang relatedincidents in or around school area

Reduced number of disciplinary actions

Sponsor programs that encourage parents and teachers towork together around student learning (e.g., classroommentors, after-school programs, curriculum committees, etc.)

Pressure for parents to be co-decision-makerswith educators

Encourage local cultures and languages to be part of school

Build intimate settings for teacher/ student relations

Increased perception of parents as partners inchildren's education

Curriculum reflects concerns and issues that community faces

Signage in school in native languages as well asEnglish; office staff and others who can communicate innative language

Bring parents into classrooms to reduce adult-student ratio

Establish small autonomous schools

Support small classroom size

Teachers believe they know students and parents better

Students perceive that teachers care about them and areaware of their progress

Parents believe teachers understand and respecttheir children

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys with parents, teachers, and studentsNeighborhood/city/district accident/crime reportsDistrict/school records on school and classroom size

Observation of the schoolSchool discipline records including suspensionsand expulsions

r

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High Quality Instruction and CurriculumHigh Quality Instruction and Curriculum indicateclassroom practices that provide challenging learningopportunities that also reflect the values and goalsof parents and the community. Community organizinggroups work to create high expectations for all

children and to provide professional developmentfor teachers to explore new ideas, which mayinclude drawing on the local community's cultureand involving parents as active partners in theirchildren's education.

STRATEGIES RESULTS

Identify learning needs, carry out research, and

Increase in parent and teacher knowledge about strategiesand conditions that lead to improved school performance

New approaches to teaching and learning (e.g., inreading) and new school structures are implemented(e.g., small schools)

Increase in attention to children needing additionalacademic and social support, including bilingual studentsrt

1

implement new teaching initiatives and structures

Take parents and teachers to visit schools utilizinginnovative approaches and/or that are "small" schools

Train parents to work in classrooms and train teachers howto best utilize parents as partners in teaching and learning

Form partnerships with groups with expertise in teachingand learning and school reform

Research different approaches to reading and campaign forimplementation of those identified as successful

Research district bilingual policies

Enhance staff professionalism2

Document need and call for greater spending onprofessional development; obtain grants for teacherprofessional development

Campaign for incentives to attract teachers to low-performing schools

Foster collegial relations (e.g., long-term planning commit-tees, cross-classroom observation, team teaching, etc.)

Provide training to teachers on making home visits, takingneighborhood walks, etc.

Make parents and community partners in

Increase in teachers' content and pedagogical knowledgeand feelings of being supported as professionals

Increase in number of credentialed teachers choosing toteach in low-performing schools and teacher retentionat those schools

Increase in collaboration among teachers, (e.g., teaming,interdisciplinary curriculum, etc.)

--)

-) children's education

Increase parent understanding of school culture

Provide parent training for work in classrooms andafter-school programs

Support and/or create settings where parents and teacherswork together and are co-decision-makers (e.g., schooldesign teams, hiring committees, curriculum committees,community education committees, local school councils, etc.)

Hold high expectations

Parents perceive themselves as standing with teachers andnot as being isolated or outsiders

Teachers perceive the local community as a resource

Increase in interaction among parents, teachers,and students

Make demands for rigorous curriculum and/or establish newschools with rigorous curriculum

Require that schools publicly demonstrate improvement

Improved test scores and/or results onalternative assessments

Greater acceptance levels at magnet schools

Improved graduation rates

DATA SOURCES

Interviews/surveys with teachers, administrators, and parentsSchool/District/Union records on incentives for teachers,teacher assignments, and teacher retentionStandardized test scores and results of alternative assessmentsSchools and classroom observations

District/School records on teacher and principalprofessional developmentSchool/District records on acceptance into magnetprograms, graduation rates, etc.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Eva Gold_Ph.D., Principal, Research for Action, has served over the last decade as primary investigator of numerous local

and national studies examining the dynamics among parent, community, and schools. Recently, she coauthored a majorreport, Clients, Consumers or Collaborators? Parents and Their Roles in School Reform During Children Achieving, 1995-

2000, that is part of the overall evaluation of Philadelphia's systemic reform effort. She is a Guest Lecturer in the Urban

Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches a course in Community Activism and School Reform.

She was the recipient of the Ralph C. Preston Dissertation Award from the Graduate School of Education, University ofPennsylvania in 2000 for her study of the work a community organizing group did with parents at a neighborhood high school.

This study extends her work of the last ten years in following the development of community organizing for school reform.

Elaine Simon, Ph.D., a Senior Research Associate at Research for Action, is an anthropologist who has conductedethnographic research and evaluation in the fields of education, employment and training, and community develop-ment. She is Co-Director of Urban Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences and adjunct Associate Professor of

Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her perspective on education isinformed by her background in urban studies and community development. She followed the early 1990s Chicagoeducation reform that devolved power to communities and parents and later the ambitious systemic school reform

effort in Philadelphia. Her current research on community organizing for school reform builds on that knowledgeand benefits from her broad perspective on urban life and urban school reform.

Chris Brown is the Director of the Schools and Community Program at the Cross City Campaign for Urban School

Reform. The Schools and Community Program works with parent and community organizations to increase mean-ingful parent and community involvement in school reform. He is responsible for providing training and technical

assistance to organizations, overseeing research and publication projects, and coordinating cross-site visits. Before

coming to Cross City, he served as Community Development Specialist at Chicago's United Way/Crusade of Mercy.

Previously, he spent seven years as director of the ACORN Housing Corporation of Illinois, a non-profit groupproviding home ownership opportunities for low and moderate-income families in Chicago's Englewood community.In addition to his professional work with schools and communities, he also serves as a parent volunteer on the Local

School Council of Boone School, the Chicago elementary school his two children attend.

Cross_City_Campaignior_Urban_SchooLReform_is a national network of school reform leaders fromnine cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston,Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia andSeattle. The Cross City Campaign is made up ofparents, community members, teachers, principals,central office administrators, researchers, unionofficials, and funders working together for the systemictransformation of urban public schools, in order toimprove quality and equity so that all urban youthare well-prepared for post-secondary education,work, and citizenship.

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform407 South Dearborn, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60605Telephone: 312.322.4880 Fax: 312.322.4885www.crosscity.org

62

Research_for_Action. (RFA) is a Philadelphia-basednon-profit organization engaged in education researchand reform. Founded in 1992, RFA works with educa-tors, students, parents, and community members toimprove educational opportunities and outcomes forall students. RFA work falls along a continuum ofhighly participatory research and evaluation to moretraditional policy studies.

Research for Action3701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104Telephone: 215.823.2500 Fax: 215.823.2510www.researchforaction.org

PHOTO CREDITS

Alliance Organizing Project: Cover, Pages 8, 22, 37, 41.

Austin Interfaith: Page 11.Jody Horton: Cover, Pages 24, 42.

Logan Square Neighborhood Association: Cover,Pages 15, 29, 43.

New York Acorn: Cover, Pages 21, 34, 44.

Oakland Community Organizations: Cover, Pages 19,

30, 45.

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PUBLICATIONS IN THE-

INDICATORS PROJECT SERIES

Stiong_Neighb_orhaads_StrongSchaols

Successful Community Organizing for School ReformAppendix: Case StudiesThe Education Organizing Indicators FrameworkExecutive Summary

Case_StudiesAlliance Organizing ProjectAustin InterfaithLogan Square Neighborhood AssociationNew York ACORNOakland Community Organizations

CROSS CITY CAMPAIGN FOR URBAN SCHOOL REFORM

FR.EPARED BY RESEARCH FOR ACTION

Successful Community Organizingfor School Reform: Executive Summary

St-

Strbrfg Neighborhood

Strong Schools

The. Indicators Project on Education Organizing

65

2

Executive Summary

Across the country, community organizing groups are turning their attention to publiceducation. Urban public schools in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods nationwideface similar problemsovercrowding, deteriorating facilities, inadequate funding, highstaff turnover, lack of up-to-date textbooks, and children performing below grade level.Students attending these schools are shut out of high quality programs, discouraged fromgoing to college, and shortchanged in their employment opportunities. Community organiz-

ing groups have begun to address these issues, and in the decade that community organizing

for school reform has taken hold and spread, the groups' efforts are beginning to pay off.

The prevailing belief is that transforming schools and improving student performance

is beyond the scope of community organizations. In fact, urban educators frequently see

communities as the problem. Operating in the professional paradigm of schools, those

who make policy for and run public schools often discount the insights of parents andcommunity members, especially when it comes to what goes on in the classroom, because

they believe that parents lack education credentials. Even when the efforts of community

organizing groups have contributed to school change, their accomplishments remain

invisible because the credit goes to the politicians and/or educators whose responsibility

it is to carry out the hard won improvements.

This study, like those of a few other researchers, advances a new paradigm of schoolreform. The new paradigm departs from models of school reform that look simply atwhat is happening inside schools and school systems, to look at work that creates a

positive dynamic between communities and schools.

The charge of this study was to identify indicators of the impact of community organ-

izing for school reform, in order to make the contributions of organized parents andcommunities visible to wider audiences. For over two years we documented the education

organizing of five groups: the Alliance Organizing Project (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania),

Austin Interfaith (Austin, Texas), Logan Square Neighborhood Association (Chicago,

Illinois), New York ACORN (New York, New York), and Oakland Community Organ-

izations (Oakland, California). In the Indicators Project series, Strong Neighborhoods,Strong Schools, we provide a methodology for understanding the contributions ofcommunity organizing to school reform and a set of illustrative case studies. In thereport, Successful Community Organizing for School Reform, we present an Education

Organizing Indicators Framework that highlights strategies and accomplishments of

education organizing. We also describe a Theory of Change that shows how the workof community organizing groups creates a process that leads from increased community

capacity to improved student learning.

The studies show that when school reform goes hand-

in-hand with building strong communities, schooling

itself changes fundamentally, increasing the chances that

reform will be carried out and sustained.

6'73

The Indicator AreasWe identified eight indicator areasbroad categoriesthat describe the work of education organizingin which accomplishments can be identified. Theeight indicator areas are: leadership development,community power, social capital, public accounta-bility, equity, school/community connection, positiveschool climate and high quality curriculum andinstruction. We refer to this set of eight indicatorareas as the Education Organizing Indicators

Framework to emphasize the importance of seeing theindicator areas as interrelated and interconnected areasof work that together contribute to a change process.

The Theory of ChangeBased on an analysis of education organizing in thefive case study sites, we developed a theory of changethat explains how accomplishments in the indicatorareas leads to improved schools and strongerstudent achievement.

Theory of Change: Relationship of Community CapacityBuilding and School Improvement

Community Capacity School Improvement

LeadershipDevelopment

CommunityPower

Equity

Curriculum

and

InstructionPublic

Accountability

Social

Capital

School

CommunityConnections

School

Climate

The theory of change model shows the pathway of influence between building community capacity and schoolimprovement. Work in three indicator areasleadership development, community power, and social capitalincreasescivic participation and leverages power through partnerships and relationships within and across communities, as wellas with school district, civic, and elected officials. Public accountability is the hinge that connects community capacitywith school improvement. Increased community participation and strong relationships together broaden accountabilityfor improving public education for children of low- to moderate-income families. Public accountability creates thepolitical will to forward equity and school/community connection, thereby improving school climate, curriculum, andinstruction making them more responsive to communities, laying the basis for improved student learning and achieve-ment. Stronger schools, in turn, contribute to strengthening community capacity.

Community organizing groups develop parent andcommunity leadership and build community power.These achievements produce social capital. Thedynamic of leadership, power and social capitalresults in broadened accountability for children'sschool success. When educators, parents, communitymembers, and politicians feel mutually accountable,finding solutions to the problems of urban schoolsbecomes a collective responsibility, lessening thetendency of parents and educators to blame eachother for school failure and those within school andpolitical bureaucracies to dodge their responsibilities.This process creates the political will that enablescommunity organizing groups to forward issues ofequity and school/community connection and bringnew influences to bear on school climate and cur-riculum and instruction. When there is broad publicacknowledgement that equity and school/communityconnection are important goals, resources for schoolsin low-income areas become more plentiful andschools often turn into centers of the community.Respectful relationships among parents and teachersand students can develop, expanding ownership forthe educational experience of children. Expectationsfor children are raised as teachers see that parentscare about their children's education. The potentialincreases as well for curriculum and instruction thatis both rigorous and culturally responsive.

Influences on Community OrganizingNo two organizing efforts look alike. Understandingthe influences on organizing activity helps to makesense of how it plays out across settings and how

activities taking place at particular moments relateto larger efforts. It also helps to create appropriateexpectations for outcomes. By looking across the fivecase study groups we identified four areas that needto be considered to make sense of any particularcommunity organizing effort.

"The overall region, state, city, and district

context in which a community organizing group isworking shapes its strategies and to some extent,its outcomes.

Although the case study groups share a commonorganizing heritage, there is a range of organiza-

tional characteristics among community organizinggroups, from how they recruit members to theirrole in implementing programs, with implicationsfor the size of their constituent base and thekinds of training and expertise available for theireducation work.

e There are many phases of an organizing campaign,

and recognizing the phase of a campaign in whicha group is working or where an activity fits intoa campaign is critical for seeing its relevance to awider effort with larger goals.

Community organizing groups are alwaysbalancing work at multiple system levels. Workat the local level is important for building the baseof constituents and the capacity to implementchange efforts. Local changes however, alsorequire supportive policies at the city, district or

state levels.

69

6

The Added Value to School ReformCommunity organizing does not provide a prescriptionfor a particular educational program or restructuringapproach, and it does not take the place of thesekinds of ideas. Nor are community organizing groupsalone in the field of external groups exerting influenceon school reform. The unique role of communityorganizing in education reform is to build communitycapacity and link that to school improvement throughpublic accountability. The indicator areas we haveidentified as associated with community capacity(leadership development, community power, andsocial capital) and public accountability are almosttotally absent in the work of school reform as it isusually defined.

Even where there is overlap with the work ofeducators and reform expertsin the areas of equity,school/community connections, curriculum andinstruction, and school climatecommunity organ-izing adds a critical dimension that otherwise wouldbe missing. Community organizing groups are rootedin neighborhoods and have a long-term commitmentto the support of local families. They see schools astied to other issues that need attention and improve-ment, and their constituents are deeply affectedand angry when public institutions are ineffectivein meeting their needs. As a result, community organ-izing groups add value to school reform efforts by:

Sustaining the vision and momentum for changeover time

Persisting despite obstacles and setbacks

Building political capital and creating the politicalwill that motivates officials to take action

Producing authentic change in policies andprograms that reflects the concerns of parents andcommunity members

Challenges and Recommendations

for Extending and Supporting EducationOrganizingEducation organizing holds much promise forreframing school reform in the new paradigm thatconnects communities and schools. Nonetheless, thereare a host of reasons why work in the education fieldis challenging, including the scale necessary to makea difference, resistance to change, the highly chargedpolitical environment, and the difficulty of identifyingmeasures of impact that everyone can agree upon.With these challenges in mind, we make the followingrecommendations to support and extend the workof education organizing:

1. Build Organizational Capacity and Infrastructure:

Community organizing needs funding to be able toattract and retain experienced organizers by beingable to offer adequate salary and benefits. They needmulti-year funding to conserve their resources andassure continuity of effort over time. They need to beable to purchase the services of technical assistancegroups, pay for conference attendance, and accessother opportunities for learning.

2. Supporting School/Community Connections-Reframing the Paradigm: Community organizingneeds the active support of funders and others whobelieve in the critical role of parents and communityin transforming schools. Funders can: bring togetherthe foundation "wings" of community building andschool reform; use both measures of communitycapacity as well as measures of school improvementin assessing community organizing efforts; and initiatedialogue about the value added by community organ-izing groups to school reform through conveningconferences and linking differently positioned groups.

3. Expand Expertise and Legitimacy: Communityorganizing groups need to develop education expertisein order to become "players" in the education sphere.Funders can: support strategic assistance to commu-nity organizing groups by facilitating networking withtechnical assistance groups; support the growth oftechnical assistance groups to meet the needs of com-munity organizing groups; and sponsor training fororganizers and community constituents, includinghow to work with the media.

7o

4. Document Success: The Indicators Project startedwith a small group of funders and school reformactivists who believed that if community organizingfor school reform was to be credible, then a meth-odology needed to be developed to document itsaccomplishments and show how these accomplish-ments lead to improved student learning. Funders canplay an important role in supporting and developingstrategies to take the learnings from this study tobroader audiences, including other funders, educatorsand the academic community. Funders can also con-tinue support for further investigation and refinementof measures of the accomplishments of the groups.

The Power of Ordinary PeopleWriting about a 1989 trip to Chicago, the historianMichael B. Katz described his amazement uponhearing that state law had radically decentralized thecity's school system, giving parents and communitymembers a significant hand in running their localschools. His previous studies of the history of

American education had led him to understand thatthe dominant form in public schoolingprofessional-ized and bureaucraticwas not inevitable. Beforebureaucratized forms came to dominate Americaneducation, they had once vied with a more democraticapproach. From his historian's perspective, Katzwondered if he was witnessing a momentous turnof events. "I wanted to know if the course of schoolreform would sustain my faith in the capacity ofordinary people to manage their schools and in theliberating effects of shedding bureaucratic weight."'

We are in agreement with those who say schoolscannot do it alone. The discourse on schoolreform needs to go beyond what happens insideschools to include the dynamic between schoolsand communities.

NOTES

1. Michael B. Katz, Improving Poor People: The welfarestate, the "underclass," and urban schools as history,p. 100. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

In this study, we have shown that when ordinary people

enter into the education arena their efforts result in

meaningful gains for students who have not been well-

served by the public schools. Ordinary people can indeed

begin to transform the institution of public education to

make it more equitable and responsive.

1 r

71 A7

7

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to both staff and leaders of the five casestudy groups for sharing with us the work of commu-nity organizing for school reform and for introducingus to their partners and others in their cities familiarwith their efforts. We also want to express appreciationto the participants in the telephone surveyexecutivedirectors and otherswho pat-411th, answered ourmany questions about education organizing.

We also acknowledge the generous support of thefollowing foundations:

BellSouth Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation,Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Ford Foundation,Edward W. Hazen Foundation, Charles StewartMott Foundation, Necdmor Fund, William PennFoundation, Rockefeller Foundation.

For additional copies of this publication, contact:

Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform407 South Dearborn, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60605Telephone: 312.322.4880 Fax: 31).32).4885www.crosscitv.org

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Strong_Neighborhoods, Strong Schools

Successful Community Or!ianizing for School ReformAppendix: Case StudiesThe Education Organizing Indicators FrameworkExecutive Summary

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