Recap on Brooklyn Peace Fair

Youth Race, and the Criminal Justice System
NY State Senator Eric Adams of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

It was a timely discussion given the recent verdict in the Sean Bell hearing.

Senator Adams spoke of his experience as a 15 year old in the 103rd precinct of South Jamaica Queens (the same precinct as Sean Bell's shooting). He was arrested at the age of 15, complied, but was assualted by the police without reason.

He reminded some Long Island University students at the seminar: "The winds of change were never blown by adults, they don't have the lung capacity. They were blown by young people." He spoke of the luxury to talk about nonviolence in a classroom and the responsibility that luxury brings with it.

The discussion mostly centered around the relationships between the "family" of judges, prosecutors, and police--the lack of an independent prosector in the Bell case, how a judge was used rather than a jury, and then onto the Bloomberg administrations gentle quest for social control, and a quota system that continues to push police officers to the brink.

It certainly was a timely and interesting discussion.

Featured Speaker: Debbie Almontaser

Almontaser spoke of the "threats to academic freedom that are making their way to K-12 education." When she began her journey to found the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dream school that would educate about a language and culture that some viewed as a threat, she found just that - people who were threatened.

Primarily, her speech outlined the sequence of events that led to her resignation: attacks from the right wing blogosphere and press after Almontaser embraced a teachable moment. The NY Post asked her to comment on a t-shirt produced by a group called Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media that said "Intifada NYC." Rather than condmning the word, Almontaser chose to explain the root of the word, which means "shaking off."

I was impressed by Almontaser's ability to criticize the NYC DOE, still her employer.

Just to give a run down of the articles that the Post used to attack Almontaser:

• "City Principal is Revolting: Tied to 'Intifada NYC' T-Shirts" August 6, 2007
• "Shirting the Issue" August 7, 2007
• "Terror Tots in Training" August 9, 2007
• "What's Arabic for 'Shut It Down'?" August 10, 2007

More info about Brooklyn for Peace.

More on Student Military Recruiting Tactics (A Little History)

This is a long one, but here we go:

In this 2004 article, "Military recruiters target schools strategically," The Boston Globe talks to Kurt Gilroy, who directed recruiting policy for the Office of the Sec. of Defense at the time:

Nearly all efforts are aimed at impending or recent high school graduates. But the marketing message is not targeted equally, acknowledged Kurt Gilroy, who directs
recruiting policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Although the military strives to maintain a presence everywhere "to give everyone an opportunity to enlist if they so choose," he said, it concentrates on places most likely to "maximize return on the recruiting dollar [because] the advertising and
marketing research people tell us to go where the low-hanging fruit is. In other words, we fish where the fish are."

This 2005 Washington Post report explores military recruiting in rural populations.

Many of today's recruits are financially strapped, with nearly half coming from lower-middle-class to poor households, according to new Pentagon data based on Zip codes and census estimates of mean household income. Nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004 came from counties in which median household income is below the U.S. median. All of the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting had lower-than-national median incomes, 12 had higher poverty rates, and 16 were non-metropolitan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by Zip code.

For information on NYC military recruiting, here's this 2005 article, originally published by the New York Daily News:

Last year, as U.S. casualties mounted in Iraq, only three residents in two neighborhoods of Manhattan's upper East Side - the city's richest area - joined the Army, Air Force or Navy.

Just a few blocks farther north, in a swath of East Harlem, 45 people enlisted.

At the same time, an astounding 113 joined in the Morrisania and Highbridge sections of the South Bronx. Meanwhile, in two zip codes of Brooklyn's poverty-stricken East New York, 116 men and women joined the military.

And in the immigrant neighborhoods of Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, 73 signed up.

That's all according to the Pentagon's own personnel records, which were obtained under a Freedom of Information request and released for the first time last week by the nonprofit National Priorities Project.

This 2007 Gotham Gazette article looks at NYC military recruitment in relation to poverty levels:

...there is an overwhelming military recruiter presence in schools like Christopher Columbus, Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Martin Luther King, which mostly serve poor, lower-income students. Recruiters are on these campuses at least every other day and become a constant presence in the students’ lives, he said.

“In the recruiters’ manual there is a lot about school ownership,” Rosmarin said. “They are encouraged to befriend the administration, become coaches for sport teams and organize after-school activities. We hear a lot of instances where recruiters will go as far as taking a student out and buying them lunch. We just want to ensure students are given the right to pursue an education without being harassed and hassled everyday.”

In September 07, The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) published a report in conjunction with the Manhattan Borough President’s Office: “Military Recruitment at Select New York City Public Schools Violates Students Rights, Report Finds.” The summary of findings and full report are available on the website.

To sum it up:

To be frank, it makes me ill that while some continue to profit off of this war, we continue to recruit the marginalized in our society to fight it, using tactics that are unfair and manipulative. When the major reason that those who do enlist is the absence of other opportunity and an array of closed doors-- there is a problem.

Brooklyn Peace Fair: Tomorrow

The featured speaker is Debbie Almontaser (@ 2:20PM in the Schwarz Gym), founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Almontaser is currently the Director of Policy and Planning of Special Projects for NYC DOE, and has worked in NYC Public Schools for 17 years from teaching to professional development. She also facilitates Boal's Theater of the Oppressed work (yay!).

Here is the website. Here's the program of events. The fair is at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

Test Prep Pep....Is this for real?

Education Policy Blog reports on an article in the NEA's Works4Me newsletter. Wow.

We have a pep assembly for the third and fourth graders a couple of days before standardized testing starts. Two teachers pretend they are cheerleaders and shake pompoms as they give a ‘pep’ talk about doing a good job on the tests, getting a good night's rest, etc. We have three teachers sit in desks and pretend to be examples of how not to take the test. One keeps turning around and bothering his neighbor, one cries, and one is not paying attention to directions.”

Another teacher is showing the ‘right’ way to take the test. Breakfast is provided for the students and the teachers/helpers on testing mornings. We also borrow an archway from the local hardware store and put Christmas lights on it with a sign that says, ‘Entering Testing Zone’. We set it up in the hallway that leads to the third and fourth grade rooms. The lights are on whenever we are testing.

Students or Soldiers? Event in Harlem

We need to be talking about this more. Here is info on the upcoming event:

Students or Soldiers?

New York City Students are entitled to explore a wide range of college and career options. Yet in many schools, the ones most actively reaching out to them are the military recruiters. The NYC City Department of Education continually refuses to take responsibility for protecting its students. There are regular reports of recruiters in classrooms, of wholesale violations of student and parent privacy rights, and a lack of a full range of career opportunities for NYC students.

Join elected officials, advocates, and youth experts examine the problem of unrestricted military recruitment, the availability of meaningful alternatives to military service and the effect of unbridled recruitment on the lives of New York City youth.

Tuesday, May 13
6:00pm
El Faro, Harlem United – 179 116th St. (Lexington & 3rd)
6 Train to 116 st.

Speakers include:
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer
City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito
NYCLU Director Donna Lieberman
Ya-Ya Network Youth Activist Juan Antigua

Refreshments will be served. Free & Open to the Public
RSVP: 212.669.4462 | events@manhattanbp.org

Be a part of this powerful evening focusing on ensuring student opportunities, protecting students’ educational rights, and holding the NYC Department of Education accountable.

Sponsored by: State Senator José M. Serrano, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito and the Students or Soldiers? Coalition

Education for Liberation: Introduction to the Friere Method

Education for Liberation at the Brecht Forum
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
2-DAY WORKSHOP
Sliding Scale of $65-$85/day

Carmelina Cartei, Kate Cavanagh,Sally Hyppolite,Esperanza Martell & Julie Novas

This is an introductory hands-on workshop in the use of popular education techniques based on the complementary approaches to Education for Liberation developed by two Brasilian cultural activists: philosopher Paulo Freire, author of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," and theater director Augusto Boal, Workers Party (PT) activist and founder of the Theater of the Oppressed.

In this introduction to the theory of the pedagogy of the oppressed and its practical application, participants will learn through practice the three basic steps of the Freire methodology:1) to express and see reality as it is experienced by the participants; 2) to understand this reality by analyzing it and exploring the root causes of problems; and 3) to act in order to change this reality.

Framed as a power analysis for decolonizing the mind and empowering oppressed communities in struggle, the workshop is designed for community organizers as well as educators and labor, political and solidarity activists in view of helping them actively plan and implement effective strategies for social action in their groups and communities.

The Corporate Classroom

NY Times Op Ed on Education.

Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out.

“In math and science, for example, our fourth graders are among the top students globally. By roughly eighth grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. And by the 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring generally near the bottom of all industrialized countries.

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, offered a brutal critique of the nation’s high schools a few years ago, describing them as “obsolete” and saying, “When I compare our high schools with what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow.

Whenever I read this type of article - I often wonder why we must continue to mention the "work force of tomorrow" as though this is the biggest problem we have to solve - our ability to compete in global industry.

Why are a third of our students dropping out? We are pushing them out. Joe Kincheloe says, "When technologies of power such as standardized testing and curricular standardization are in place, possibility decreases that marginalized students will gain the confidence to reshape their relation to power or even reshape power's relationship to them...Most students who find themselves in such disempowered situations don't have the confidence to continue" (Critical Pedagogy).

Isn't education about a vision of justice and equality? When we place corporate and capitalist interests at the center of our schooling, we create power structures and systems that are not in the best interest of our children. When we focus on creating a stable work force- aren't we creating a pedagogy of low expectations? Looking to keep our society as ordered and efficient as possible? Making sure that those who are at the "bottom" now continue to stay there?

Education is about alleviating suffering. It is about justice. It's not about training a work force so that the rich can get richer and power structures can stay the same.

Children in our schools need to learn how to ask questions and pose problems. To ask the questions of our society that forces those who are marginalized to enter lotteries to compete for decent educations or some sort of health care.

When we "standardize" our classrooms and schools, we continue to "standardize" our students and the status-quo of our society.

Privileging Literacy

A 63 year old man talks about his journey to learn how to read (NPR).

Privileging literacy in our society, we see "illiteracy" as a focalized problem rather than a larger scale issue. It's important to keep in mind that literacy is a social practice, not necessarily a skill. Some societies (ours, for example) chooses to privilege literacy. The fact that we do privilege literacy leads those that are considered "illiterate" or unable to read "print" can be judged as stupid or lazy--leading to marginalization (and also pushing individuals to "hide" this). In a society that privileges literacy, it is unfair that we do not acknowledge the many ways of learning to read the word and the world...

The system, not the school, is the problem

Paulo Freire comments on the oppressor tactic of "dividing and ruling."

One of the characteristics of oppressive cultural action which is almost never perceived by the dedicated but naive professionals who are involved is the emphasis on a focalized view of problems rather than on seeing them as dimensions of a totality. In "community development" projects the more a region or area is broken down into "local communities," without the study of these communities both as totalities in themselves and as part of another totality...the more alienation is intensified. And the more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and keep them divided. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

In their new book, Keeping the Promise, the Center for Community Change focuses on the need to view the problems in the education system as a totality rather than individual failing schools:

The prevailing emphasis on individualistic solutions to collective challenges is nowhere more evident than in our public schools. All of us are dismayed and angry about the state of public education in our poorest communities. But the response of policy-makers and conservative advocates has too often been to offer individual families a way out, rather than to acknowledge that we must solve this problem collectively. The experiences of all children in the nation’s public schools (and on our streets) are intertwined. When we are satisfied because some schools are doing well, or when we offer individual students the “choice” to attend high-performing schools, we pull up the ladder of opportunity and deny success to millions of others. We must demand a collective re-commitment to public education. We must do it together. And we must do it soon.

Community Values in Public Education

The American public still strongly supports our historic tradition of public education. There is wide and deep support for public schools as a place – perhaps the place – where children and adults engage as one community, learn from each other and rise
collectively. There are many components to an education system that is truly structured for the common good:

• school funding must not rely on local property wealth but instead on what children need to succeed. All schools must be funded to meet those needs;


• public schools must provide universal access to students. Communities support well-funded neighborhood schools, to which all children in a geographic community are entitled enrollment. Students should be allowed to
  “choose” among specialized curricula or programs within a public school district, but there must always be a good school in their neighborhood that will guarantee access.


• public schools should be melting pots, where children with different backgrounds can learn from and with each other. Children must be seen as resources, not “consumers” or “problems.”


• parents and teachers must sit at decision-making tables, and must be part of school governance. Parents are not “consumers” but full partners. Teachers are not factory workers, to be penalized based on their “production rates.” They are and should be supported as, professionals.


• schools should never be out-sourced to for-profit management corporations. Public dollars for educating our children should not line the pockets of entrepreneurs.
  
  In our campaign for Community Values, we must demand that public schools be fully supported by our collective resources. It is time to stop asking some communities to get by with less than the full riches our nation can offer. We must demand policies that connect us together, and an end to structures that isolate and separate.

Teacher Talk

NPR's Tell Me More interviews teachers on their obstacle and challenges, why they stay, and why they leave.

New: International Journal of Critical Pedagogy

Joe Kincheloe's introduction to the new International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. Exciting! Here is the first issue. (Also worth reading, Kincheloe's book, Critical Pedagogy.) The Freire project has also launched a number of blogs, although I'm not sure of the frequency of posts.

The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy wants to be an open-access on-line journal, totally uninterested in turning a monetary profit for anybody or any organization, that helps redefine the nature of critical scholarship (and scholarship in general), transformative community building, individual and social change, and education. We want to be brave in the struggles against the oppressive imperial machine conquering the world, yet humble in our countenance and sense of selfhood.

Kidventions

I've been having some of my fifth graders come up with inventions, an assignment that I described as "things that would make their lives easier."

It's always eye opening to see how assignments are interpreted. One student who told me that she had "done the wrong thing" pointed to her answer: "If I had a father." One of those eye opening moments...

Anyways, here are some of my favorite "inventions":

• The mega super ultra auto mobile of wind energy – a flying vehicle that uses air for its energy source and can fit up to 25 people and goes over 1,000 mph
• Teeth brushing vision goggle – shows you where you have to brush
• Talking mirror
• Flying pencil- comes to you when you clap your hands and say “pencil come here.”
• Pencil that connects to your brain to just our ideas instead of wasting time writing
• Never-charge laptop
• Non-hurting need that sucks up blood
• A car that runs on water
• Hair maker
• A purse that looks small but is huge inside
• Shoe tie-er: shoe that ties by itself
• Machine that reduces pollution
• Solar power school bus
• Shirt that changes design and size
  
  
  
  

Very Special Arts (VSA) Fellowships

Fellowships for Teaching Artists with Disabilities in the Visual and Performing Arts

VSA arts is seeking applications from artist-educators for the Teaching Artist Fellowship program. The Teaching Artist Fellowship seeks to identify, engage, and support outstanding teaching artists with disabilities in the visual and performing arts.

The deadline is May 8, 2008.

Charting the Course Conference

New Jersey Theater Alliance and New Jersey Arts Education Collective
Charting The Course Conference
Monday, April 21, 2008

This conference, with a keynote address by Sir Kenneth Robinson, is for the advancement of arts education, artists, and arts organizations.

The conference has sessions on:

• Shaping the Field of Arts Education
• The Future of the Teaching Artist Profession
• The Relationship between the Teaching Artists and the Arts Organization
• Financial Planning, The Health Maze and Legal Needs for Teaching Artists

Pushing Out 50% of Our Students?

A number of big cities have graduation rates of less than 50%.

The lowest graduation rates are in Detroit, Indianapolis, and Cleveland.

Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore's suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.

It's Not on the Test

Great music video: "So music and art and the things you love best are not in your school cause they're not on the test..."

How we teach teachers

Education Policy Blog has a couple interesting posts on the way we educate teachers.

Barbara Stengel writes:
We can't tell someone how to teach. But we can give them opportunities to teach, invite them to reflect on what they intended to do and what they did do and what actually happened in the light of accepted theory, time-honored practice, and richly conceptualized research, and we can coach them through this process. In this way, they can be led (in another Dewey locution) "in the direction of what the expert already knows."

One commentor posts:
I think what we do an extremely poor job of is letting pre-service teachers discover that they are not "missionaries" out to fix children, but that they should be "guides in the woods" helping students get from where they are to where they need to go and want to go.Of course the problem is systemic - no system appears more resistant to change than education. College students sit in classrooms as they always have, following non-individualized syllabi as they always have, learning industrial teaching methods as they always have. Then they go out and have that "opportunity to teach" in buildings that do everything as they always have - stamping on student after student, assuming that each is simply raw material which can have 'value-added' as long as enough pressure is applied.And almost nowhere along the way do we really get them to question - what white northern European Protestant - modernist view of the world creates this system and gains from it? Why do we keep enabling a system so destructive to so many children?

Teaching Artist Rights

A few frustrations from my teaching artist work:

I attended a teaching artist training on Friday for the organization that I work for. The training includes both teaching artists and the teachers from the schools that we work with. One problem is that I usually teach on Fridays, so to attend the training I miss a teaching day with students and also I receive less compensation for training than for teaching (why?).

The teachers have a hard time attending because they miss days with their students. Often times, when teachers miss a day, instead of getting substitutes, their class gets split up and sent to other teachers (often times teachers of other grades). This is obviously not ideal. Consequently, many classroom teachers have a difficult time getting permission to attend these trainings. That's one issue.

Another one. It came to the time on the schedule labeled "Lunch: Room 408: 12-1pm." As I'm sitting in Room 408 with the other teaching artists and we are discussing our upcoming field trips with the students, my stomach starts growling--I'm eager to get to the "lunch" portion of this session. Finally, I whisper to the person beside me: "Uh, do they give us lunch?" She shakes her head: no. The training was over at 3pm. I know it is a little thing, but to be treated as a professional (or maybe just as a human being), I would have liked to a.) received lunch (as I'm being paid less for the training anyways); b.) had time to go out and buy my lunch; or at the very least c.) been told in advance to bring my lunch.

I like the Association of Teaching Artist's Teaching Artist Wish List. If we really believe that TA work is valuable and worthwhile, we need to push for the profession to be a sustainable one. This means that organizations that employ TAs need to think about the way that they treat them. Obviously, compensation is a major consideration. I am not paid for my planning (which is hours and hours of work), transportation (which is typically an hour each way), or cancellations (which happen frequently). I am also expected to find health insurance...which is a whole another issue.

I'll leave it at that for now, but take a look at the wish list below.

The Teaching Artist Wish List

To be compensated in a way that recognizes professionalism, education and experience.

To be compensated for prep time, as other contract professions do (designers and
therapists, for example).

To have work throughout the school year, not only the last 8 weeks.

To have teachers, administrators, and principals invest in long-term Arts In Education programs and not look for quick projects.

To have cultural organizations with Arts In Education programs recognize the professionalism of Teaching Artists and not continually pay the same rate year after year even though the Teaching Artists demonstrate excellence and mastery.

To have cultural organizations value Teaching Artists as integral to their mission and not rationalize that Teaching Artist can pay taxes, health insurance and transportation on less than $50 an hour.

To not have to hustle for funding and residencies every year.

To not be held hostage to flavor of the month pedagogies and emperors with no clothes on.

To be paid in a timely fashion.

To be able to work with teachers enrolled in certification programs in schools of education to foster the team-teaching collaborative environment with artists. There are great strides that need to be taken in teacher education to take advantage of the opportunity of Arts In Education and nourish it in a way that will allow for the optimal educational experience for the students.

To offer professional development to arts administrators who have forgotten the value of art, Teaching Artists, and what really goes into implementing Arts In Education: living wage fees, prep time, research, travel, and opportunities for reasonably priced health, disability, and liability insurance.

To educate cultural organizations and arts administrators with the message that they are there to support the Teaching Artist as well as the school.

To educate cultural organizations that push their programming instead of understanding the potential of Arts In Education for school reform and for the professional career of a Teaching Artist.

To provide professional development for community organizations who work with Teaching Artists on fees, Teaching Artists, program assessment.

To have funders meaningfully address the training, the lack of work, and how hard it is to earn a living as a Teaching Artist.

To have more connection with fellow Teaching Artists across the country.

A few more thoughts on community organizing, ed reform, and student voice

Given The Annenberg Institute's report on community organizing and school reform (see last post), here's a portion of a paper I wrote on drama and the student voice in education reform:

Noting the current state of school reform and the continuing existence of large achievement gaps in the educational system, “nontraditional” attempts at promoting the student voice within educational policy seem ever the more valuable. As attempts at school reform continue to struggle, Alison Cook-Sather comments on the historical lack of student voice in education: “Since the advent of formal education in the United States, both the educational system and that system’s every reform have been premised on adults’ notions of how education should be conceptualized and practiced.” She continues, “There is something fundamentally amiss about building and rebuilding an entire system without consulting at any point those it is ostensibly designed to serve” (3). Without meaningfully incorporating the voices of students into how we form our schools, we are left with an incomplete picture of education reform.

Maxine Greene promotes the arts as spaces that open up students to explore possibilities, frustrations and change. She warns that “one danger [of our education system] that threatens both teachers and students…is that they will come to feel anger at being locked into an objective set of circumstances defined by others” (124). She comments that the arts “may be able to create schoolroom atmospheres where young people are moved to find hope again and, even in small spaces, begin to repair” (130).

When commenting on the student voice in educational reform, Yvonna Lincoln asks, “how do we set the stage for such sharing?” Perhaps it is the stage itself where we find one such meaningful forum. Playwright José Rivera (qtd. in Saldaña) reasons that:

Theatre is the explanation of life to the living. We try to tease apart the conflicting noises of living and make some kind of pattern and order. It’s not so much an explanation of life as it is a recipe for understanding, a blueprint for navigation, a confidante with some answers—enough to guide you and encourage you, but not to dictate to you. (27)

There remains is a need to create forums where students can express their opinions about school communities first hand to wider stakeholders who are interested in collaborating to form strategies and change based on the student voice itself.

A Brief Literature Review

There is a great deal of literature available on the inclusion of the student voice in education reform. Patrick Lee’s “In Their Own Voices: An Ethnographic Study of Low-Achieving Students Within the Context of School Reform” is one that seeks to capture the student voice on the topic of school reform. A high school student-researcher in Lee’s study summarized: “…students sometimes feel motivated after they have talked to somebody about their problems, and they also feel that there is at least somebody that was willing to ask about their problems, and they feel like they could study because the teacher does care about their learning and being someone in life” (Lee 1999).

Readers hear a harsher reality in this 11-year-old’s depiction: “Everything that come out of your mouth probably ain’t [going to be seen as] true because you know grown up, they got more respect and more power over you” (Lee 1999). Yet, even in this ethnographic research study we read about the student encounter through the lens of the researcher’s report. We are still one step removed from the literal voice of the student.

There appears to be some dramatic work being done in this direction of including the student voice in the educational climate—for instance, Jane Plastow’s work, “Finding Children's Voices: A Pilot Project Using Performance to Discuss Attitudes to Education Among Primary School Children in Two Eritrean Villages” examines the educational experiences of fifth graders in Eritrea and their reflections on the positive and negative aspects on their education. In this program, Plastow and her colleagues utilized Image Theatre techniques to explore what they liked and disliked about their school. Looking at these images, the students were then asked to create strategies for what they might change about the images, using Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Finally, students presented teachers with short performance pieces that provoked teacher response (Plastow 347).

I was unable to locate documented dramatic experiences that specifically approached educational reflection and reform in the United States. Yet, there are various non-dramatic programs and reports that seek to solicit the opinions of students such as SoundOut, an organization that highlights efforts where educators and students work together toward school reform, typically through local initiatives that promote surveys and school report cards created by students. Still, the forums for creating this dialogue between students, teachers, researchers, and policy makers are largely new, with much of the territory uncharted.

Stronger Communities = Stronger Schools

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform has released Organized Communities, Stronger Schools:

Data suggest that organizing is contributing to school-level improvements, particularly in the areas of school–community relationships, parent involvement and engagement, sense of school community and trust, teacher collegiality, and teacher morale. Successful organizing strategies contributed to increased student attendance, improved standardized-test-score performance, and higher graduation rates and college-going aspirations in several sites. Our findings suggest that organizing efforts are influencing policy and resource distribution at the system level. Officials, school administrators, and teachers in every site reported that community organizing influenced policy and resource decisions to increase equity and build capacity, particularly in historically low-performing schools.

Data indicate that participation in organizing efforts is increasing civic engagement, as well as knowledge and investment in education issues, among adult and youth community members. Young people reported that their involvement in organizing increased their motivation to succeed in school.

Our research suggests that organizing groups achieve these schooling and community impacts through a combination of system-level advocacy, school- or community-based activity, and strategic use of research and data. Continuous and consistent parent, youth, and community engagement produced through community organizing both generates and sustains these improvements.

Pretty interesting. Makes me wonder about the connections between the potential to explore community issue and advocacy through the arts and community-based theatre and other art forms. I think it is so important to build communities around our schools, and sometimes we see arts organizations functioning so far removed from the communities that they wish to reach.

I looked at the report's answer to "What is community organizing for school reform?" I've recently been exploring the possibility of using applied theatre to explore education reform and elevate the voices of students while connecting communities of students, teachers, and administrators.

What is community organizing for school reform?

• involves youth, public school parents, and community residents and/or
  institutions
• builds power by mobilizing large numbers of people
• focuses on accountability, equity, and quality
• recruits and develops leadership as a core activity
• uses direct action tactics to apply pressure on decision-makers
• aims to transform power relations that produce failing schools in low- and
  moderate- income neighborhoods and communities of color

So, I'd now ask:

Can the arts mobilize large numbers of people, recruiting and developing leadership?
Can the arts explore the transformation of dominant power structures and explore new possibilities?
Can the arts involve students, parents, school administrators, and teachers, building community?