Mark Warren Q&A: Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing for Education

Associate Professor Mark Warren and Lecturer Karen Mapp introduced a new Special Interest Group (SIG) this week focused on grassroots organizing at the American Education Research Association (AERA) annual meeting in New York City. SIGs bring together individuals with a common interest of study, teaching, and research at AERA forums. As part of this new group, Warren and colleagues will research the power of grassroots organizing and its ability to impact education policy and communities.

Q. What does it mean to have a new Special Interest Group announced at the AERA annual meeting?

A. The AERA announcement signals that the study of community and youth organizing has established itself as an important field of research in education. While contemporary organizing for education reform has deep historical roots, it has emerged as a widespread phenomenon in local districts across the country over the past 20 years. I have worked with colleagues like HGSE Professor Karen Mapp, University of California Los Angeles Professor Jeannie Oakes, Duke University Professor Charles Payne, Boston College Professor Dennis Shirley, Jean Anyon in New York, and many others trying to build a field of study. Doctoral students at HGSE have also had the opportunity to contribute to this effort and make connections to scholars in the field. The formation of this Special Interest Group represents an important milestone in this endeavor.

Q. What is grassroots community organizing?

A. Grassroots community organizing has been long used as a tool for disadvantaged people to gain power to affect the practice of institutions in political and social life. Although organizing is a diverse phenomenon, it draws from the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s neighborhood organizing, and has been enriched by the traditions of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and union organizing among others. Community organizing is a process where people are brought together acting in a common self interest in order to achieve common aims. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create social change, and sometimes social movements, by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.

Q. What makes grassroots organizing under education reform so distinct?

A. Grassroots organizing is a relatively new notion in education policy where independent local organizations composed of low-income students and parents engage directly in local, state, or national education policy decisions. Over the past 20 years, organizing has emerged as a powerful force aimed at improving public education, addressing injustice, and advancing youth development in low-income communities.

Organizing efforts are distinguished from other more orthodox forms of educational change by their collective nature and by the active engagement of parents, teachers, and pupils in the politics of school and community change. Unlike more orthodox forms of parent and community engagement, organizing efforts are characterized by a focus on building effective power to influence institutions and policy through leadership development, relationship-building, and critical consciousness.

The starting point for an organizing approach to education change is typically grassroots mobilization outside of school systems and electoral politics. As such, organizing differs significantly from the activities of the education interest groups that have historically been influential such as the National Education Association, the California Teachers Association, or the national Parent Teacher Association.

Q. How will your new special interest group promote grassroots organizing?

A. The SIG will foster research that examines the ways in which organizing efforts affect school improvement and youth development, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color. We will bring researchers together to promote ways to collaborate with each other to advance research and practice in education organizing and further equity in the education system. The group will create a space for scholars in this emerging field to learn from each other, further define this area of study, and mentor junior scholars pursuing this line of inquiry as graduate students and junior faculty. We are also interested in sponsoring venues where researchers, educators, and organizers can engage with each other, and in some cases pursue collaborative research projects. We have a lot of plans for activities to foster research and discussion, including a website, listserv, awards for publications, and sessions at the annual AERA meetings.

Q. What impact can grassroots organizing have on education today and in the future?

A. Organizing efforts have already begun to have an impact at the school, district, and state levels. At the school level, many local organizing groups have collaborated with neighborhood schools to improve safety, increase parental engagement, open community schools, and develop more culturally relevant curricula, among other things. At the district level, organizing campaigns have led to the development of new, small schools, “grow your own” teacher programs, and the adoption of college prep curricula as mandatory in all schools. Organizing efforts have sometimes proved able to work together to influence state policy, for example, to increase core funding to urban schools and to provide additional funding for new initiatives like teacher home visitation programs. Still, the field of organizing for public education reform is young, under-resourced, and limited in scale and scope. It faces a number of challenges to transform the quality of schooling in low-income communities, and certainly cannot do so alone. Nevertheless, it promises to engage organized voices, as well as the time, energy, and political power of the people who have the strongest direct interest in the improvement of education in low-income communities, that is, parents and students who actually attend these schools