Community Organizing for School Reform

The reason each student signed on to Professor Mark Warren and Lecturer Karen Mapp's research project is different. For one student who had experience in community organizing, it was an opportunity to learn more. For another, a meeting with Warren prior to enrolling in the Ed School sparked her interest. And, for a student interested in rural education, there was no better way to begin exploring it than having the chance to study in a new environment.

For the 16 students, who became part of Warren and Mapp's four-year research project exploring the ins and outs of six community organizing groups within the United States, it was truly a career -- even life -- changing opportunity.

"My research and professional trajectory was shaped tremendously by being involved in this project," says doctoral student Thomas Nikundiwe, Ed.M.'07. "It wasn't like we were research assistants in the project -- it was like it was our project the whole time."

Now, nearing its close, the Community Organizing School Reform Project's research was presented by Warren, Mapp, and several doctoral students to a sold out Presidential Session at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Denver.

"We are working to build a new field of research on community organizing in the education community and this session marks the growing recognition of the critical importance of meaningful forms of parent and community engagement to school reform and social justice in low-income communities," Warren says.

No matter how you look at it, the Community Organizing School Reform Project is as unique a research collaboration as they come. Though Mapp's work focuses on family, school, and community partnerships, as well as family engagement, it overlaps with Warren's study of community organizing. Mapp said together they recognized a need to study not only how community organizations work, but also the behind-the-scenes strategies and thinking of these organizations.

Before embarking on the research, Warren and Mapp say they were warned by colleagues not to make the project too big.

"When we put out the word that we wanted to start the project, we had so many students who said, 'Yes,' and really wanted to be involved in this so that we couldn't say no," Mapp says. "The students were some of our best students ... and we figured it was a big enough project that we were going to need these students."

"People told us we were crazy," Warren says, noting that he didn't initially envision so many doctoral students partaking in the research project. However, he wanted to build a place for the study of organizing at HGSE and the overwhelming student response made him want to be as inclusive as possible.

The lure for the students was not only having an opportunity to work closely with Warren and Mapp and get apprenticeship training in qualitative research methods, but also to understand more about the relatively unknown world of community organizing and education.

To date, there is very little research about the role of community organizing in education reform making the subject often misunderstood. According to Warren, the perception of community organizing often focuses on rallying a bunch of people to a meeting in order to demand something and rarely looks beyond that mobilization. Although community organizing groups do mobilize people at times, the distinctive work of organizing lies in long term and patient relationship-building in communities and schools, and is focused on building the participation and leadership of people themselves in change efforts.

The Community Organizing School Reform Project takes a closer look at what makes six community organizing groups located in six different cities throughout the country a success. The organizations, which were chosen based on significant work tied to education and community organizing, are as follows:

• People Acting in Community Together (PACT), based in San Jose, Calif., organizes diverse families and community members through religious congregations to address a wide variety of issues including public education reform.
• One-LA, organizes institutions in the greater Los Angeles area to build civically-engaged constituencies that addresses a wide variety of issues, including those pertaining to local schools.
• Padres y Jovenes Unidos, based in Denver, organizes parents and youth in the city's Latino community around education, immigration, and other issues.
• Southern Echo, based in the Mississippi Delta, draws from the civil rights movement organizing tradition to address issues of systemic racism and continued inequality in the public education system.
• Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, based in the Bronx, N.Y., organizes parents, youth, and community members around a variety of community issues through congregations, neighborhood associations, and schools.

Working mostly in teams of three, the students took a total of four weeklong trips during the research to interview participants, observe activities, collect and analyze data, and ultimately create case studies revealing the how and why of organizing. The cases reveal where these organizations came from, how they work, and identifies any similarities and differences across the six cases.

Although many of the organizations studied apply different theories and traditions of organizing, the research findings demonstrate that community organizing is deeply contextual and can look different in different places. "It's not a one-size-fits-all model," Warren says.

For many of the researchers involved, it was surprising to learn that comparisons among the groups were not as important as they previously thought. "We developed much more of a synthesis," Warren explains. "What does strong organizing look like? It looks like sinking deep roots into communities, building new relationships, developing collaborations with educators, all the while responding closely to local context. Groups do these things in different ways but we found the similarities far outweigh the differences."

The group has just finished compiling these findings into a book slated for release next year. Additionally, Warren adds that they are about to finish three teaching cases to be published by Harvard Educational Publishing Group this fall and are planning a conference on the topic of community organizing and education to be held at HGSE next year.

Although many involved in the project admit that working with such a large group definitely had its challenges, remarkably the entire research project -- including everything from determining the appropriate tone to use when writing, maintaining the true voice of the site participants, and even the language to convey -- was done collaboratively and based on consensus.

In what doctoral student Mara Tieken, Ed.M.'06, described as a sometimes "maddening slow" process of working with such a large group, she also attributes it as a great means of checking your research instincts, forging ahead, and finishing. "Now, I hear their voices in my head when I do my own research, like, What would Thomas say about this?" Tieken says. "The moments of frustration became valuable, made me aware of my own tendencies, and forced me to think more. I really appreciate how Mark and Karen organized the process and honored students' voices, wishes, and perspectives."

"The community organizing research group is a rare place that fills my mind and heart...it's a space that fights and advocates on justice oriented issues, a space and group that walks the talk," says doctoral student Soojin Susan Oh. "Even with such a large group of students we were equally contributing members from the get go."

Ultimately, the project, which required a two-year commitment from students, grew to become more than just a research project but a community that became an important and meaningful part of everyone's lives.

For Tieken, who studies rural education and focused on Southern Echo, the experience opened her eyes, seeing as her research partner came from a completely different background than herself. "He's a Jamaican male and I'm a white female so it has been fascinating to take in the same experience and [learn] how similar and sometimes different it is for each of us," she says, noting that together they spent hours driving between different sites talking. "The time I spent with him has been some of the most educational and formative experience I've ever had."

Oh agrees that this experience has ultimately shaped her experience at HGSE. "Going through this entire process as an equal contributing member literally was a mentoring process and reflection of so many other trainings I was able to receive at HGSE," she says. "This project is one of the experiences that crystallized my being prepared and mentored as a future thinker and leader more so than anything else. I think it speaks to the mission not only working at the nexus of practice, policy, and research but that HGSE aspires to develop leaders."