Organizing for Equity

Organizing for Equity. Can Parents Fill the Void?
By Michael B. Fabricant
At least since the civil rights movement, Americans have documented and decried—but done little to decrease—the achievement gap. This gulf, one of many that divide us by race and class, has festered in part because the larger question of inequitable investment in poor communities of color has long been neglected. Demonstration projects of various kinds have been tested in selected communities—but little has been made of the successes. Demonstration projects, if they work , are meant to be scaled up; however, amore ambitious, transformative investment in a cross section of poor communities across the nation has never been attempted.
The reticence to make such an investment has to do with the magnitude of resources required and a lack of political will. Presently, any call for such investment is undercut by both the recession and a political reluctance to tax even the wealthiest citizens. Income inequality in the United States is now at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the “top 10 percent of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gain to overall incomes since 1979, with the top 1 percent alone claiming 38.7 percent of overall gains.”1 Child poverty is increasing, the middle class is disappearing, and the wealthy are becoming dramatically wealthier. In 1983, the net worth of the wealthiest 1 percent of households was 131 times greater than the median family net worth. By 2007, it was 181 times greater—and by 2009, it was 225 times greater.2 Such inequality is neither natural nor inevitable: the United States has the highest income disparity among Western industrialized nations.3
…Because the problems in our inner cities are not new, I see little reason to hope that any positive change will emerge from our nation’s elite policymaking circles. When it comes to public education, our leaders are far too insulated from the consequences of their choices. Those closest to the disasters of growing inequality, long-standing underinvestment, and new recession-related disinvestment in public education must organize a counterbalancing power to challenge present policymaking trends.
Read more; http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2011/Fabricant.pdf

An Organizing Approach to School Change

Don’t’ face school reform alone; organize
An organizing approach to school change.
Let us be clear. A progressive teacher working in a school is good, but it is not school reform.. A progressive activist teacher will improve the education of 30 students, or 100 students, and these are significant contributions. But, one or two activists are not school reform nor is a single progressive principal.
The success of some outstanding schools serving low income neighborhoods indicate that schools can improve, children in poverty can be provided with high quality schooling.(Chenoweth, 2007) Individual schools that have improved their performance and academic achievement are valuable islands of hope for reform. And hope is a vital ingredient in working for change.
Few, or none of the superintendents of major school systems – and their staffs- have reformed their schools to produce equal opportunity. We know from experience in several cities that school reform efforts are not sustained beyond the tenure of a superintendent or a principal. Indeed there are numerous cases of schools and leaders making important changes only to be stopped by control oriented superintendents in the name of reform ( Wilms, 2008). And, there has been realistically little improvement in reducing the achievement gap in urban systems.

Teachers as agents of change
Reform will occur when groups of teachers work together to create a new, more democratic school system to better serve all of the students. Real School reform requires substantive change.
We need to develop a new conception of teachers as change agents for those teachers committed to civil rights and the success of their students. This potential role is under developed. We need active and activist teacher leaders to guide and direct change to a more democratic and a more equal school system. In most school districts administrators are not promoting democratic reform and perhaps their positions prevent them from promoting democratic reform.
There currently exists a number of leadership roles for teachers. They fill positions such as lead teacher , grade level leaders, host teaches, mentor teachers, student advocates, curriculum specialists, teacher organizers, language specialists, union leaders and change agents.
Teachers leaders are needed to provide a teacher voice and advocacy for quality education within the school reform efforts. Teacher organizers are in particular need when schools are under some form of re-constitution or re-organization to improve achievement

What does a change agent do? In Doing Democracy: The MAP model for Organizing Social Movements, the authors list the roles of change agents as including:

Organizing people power and engaged citizens for the common good.
Educates and involves the majority of the citizens on the issues.
Involves pre-existing grass roots and parents organizations, networks, unions.
Places the issues on the societies agenda.
Promotes alternatives.

For teacher activists the first group to organize is other teachers. First you need to find one ally, then two. We know from organizing that relationships matter, so you need to develop positive on-going relationships with a number of teachers in your school site. Indeed, this will make your own work life more interesting and bearable.
Parents are a second important component of organizing. With large scale immigration there is no reason to limit your organizing to citizens, parents are more appropriate partners. It will help to keep in mind those activities which all adults can participate in and those limited to citizens (such as voting).
An important task is to plan an educational agenda. School talk is often mystifying to parents. And, since so much professional talk is used, parents can be mislead to pursue anti democratic projects. Parents have been recruited and used in the anti bilingual political campaigns and often used in divisive campaigns over reading.
Teachers should look for a community based organization in their area and work with it. Several community based organizations such as those affiliated with the IAF, or PICO, or ACORN, work on school reform and prepare parents to become community leaders ( see Anyon, 2006, Oaks and Rogers, 2006, http://www.industrialareasfoudation.org). Parent organizing can provide the power needed for sustained change in the power structure of a school district. Teachers, parents, and educational activists need each other. The first step is building relationships of trust among these constituencies.

As soon as you begin to organize for social justice you will encounter other, already existing groups. Perhaps the most frequent encounter will be with a union activist in your building. It is useful to map out the existing groups and interests and conduct some informal research to see which of these groups may assist you. For example a union activist may well encourage you to bring your goals within the union effort. This is a possible approach. Certainly if you can bring the union to support your projects this will assist you. It is important and valuable for teachers to bring their unions along as they pursue progressive change. These are our institutions with staff, money, and resources.
However, a note of caution is needed. Unions have their institutional agenda which usually focuses on the salaries and the treatment of employees. These are important issues particularly for under paid teacher and teacher assistants. The union agenda is rather well understood. And, whenever possible, you want to work in cooperation with union. However, quite often the invitation to work within the union is actually a recruitment of you to work on the union agenda rather than on your social justice agenda. You can be an activist and will be encouraged to carry out the many valuable service projects of the union. And it is important to have the union with you when you encounter conflict. But it is a significant question. Does working within the union allow you to pursue your previous goals? Or, are you quickly recruited to work on the union goals? This is an area of needed continuous dialogue with your allies. After all, the union may have already developed a valuable strategy which supports your work.

Marshall Ganz, on organizing

Marshall Ganz, one of the United Farmworkers leading organizers, and now a Professor at Harvard, is discussing politics and organizing this week on Talking Points Memo.
Well worth reading. Here are some excerpts.
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/mar/27/organizing_for_democratic_renewal

…A University of Chicago student of criminology deeply skeptical of social work, Alinsky was greatly impressed by the organizing successes of the CIO, led by John L. Lewis. Although labor had begun to win a seat at the table at which urban interests were negotiated, others had not – especially those who lived in lower income communities, did not have unions to represent them, or had no other way to get in on the deal making. One answer, he concluded, was to build community organizations modeled on the CIO. They would bring people together, create a venue in which they could discover common interests, and mobilize collective resources to get the power to win their own seat at the table. Unlike the CIO, these associations were organizations of organizations, not individuals, to leverage existing community leaders and their networks.
This approach contrasted sharply with two others: that of social workers and that of socialists. Traditional social work ignored the power disparity most often responsible for poverty, and treated its victims as clients seeking public patronage, rather than citizens able to act together to make their voices heard and thus do something about the power disparity responsible for the problem in the first place. And unlike the socialists, Alinsky eschewed any ideological orientation other than that of populist democracy, coupled with a pragmatic interest based approach to program.
One institutional leader for whom this approach held real promise was Chicago Bishop Bernard Sheil, soon Alinsky’s partner. Alinsky’s approach to social justice offered an alternative to socialists with which the Church was in conflict and contributed tools for citizen participation less well established in the Roman Catholic tradition than among Protestants…..

Second, the promise of “connectedness” via the Internet is an invitation to a dance that has yet to begin. The Internet is a market place, not an organization. As such it offers motivated participants an opportunity to give money, exchange information, and market causes. Organizations, however, as Alinsky organizers know, are built of interpersonal commitments people make to each other of their time, money, and energy. With skilled leaders, organizations have the capacity to strategize, motivate, and engage in purposeful effective action – and develop more skilled leaders. But in the last election, opportunity created by the Internet was only intermittently translated into action because there were few organizers. This time, perhaps it will be different.
Third, the recommitment to organizing by the labor movement during the 1990s, especially by SEIU and its associates, afforded thousands of young people an opportunity to learn organizing skills, acquire experience, and make a real difference. This is true not only of young people recruited from colleges, but also new immigrants, one of the most energized constituencies in America and which has only begun to develop its political potential. Similarly, some campaigns offered unique training grounds for organizers, such as the New Hampshire Dean campaign, the Iowa Kerry campaign, and others.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/mar/27/organizing_for_democratic_renewal