Collaborative Organizing for School Improvement in New York City, 1996-2006

NYCReport.pdf

Related Program

Report

Abstract

This report was commissioned by Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, program director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to examine the role community organizing can play in shaping effective social policy.  It looks at the case of community organizing for educational equity and school improvement in New York City, represented by a network of neighborhood and citywide collaboratives.  These collaboratives are engaging non-profit organizations in low-income communities of color to become advocates, policy initiators, watchdogs and civic constituents for school change.    The review was designed by consultant Ann Bastian, with the participation of RBF staff, and involved a series of panel discussions, surveys and interviews.  The results can be summarized as follows:

• A coherent and collaborative grassroots network of education activists has been formed across New York City for public school reform, which crosses barriers of race, language, locale, and age.
• This process has empowered a new layer of activists and leaders, has engaged low-income communities in education issues, has strengthened community-based organizations, and has created new relationships and alliances with other education stakeholders. 
• A broad and significant range of local school improvements and innovations have been achieved in the neighborhood schools where the collaboratives are active.
• In order to impact system-wide policy and the newly centralized NYC Department of Education, this network is expanding to citywide scale, requiring new funding and staffing streams to support multiple levels of organizing.

The results are only part of the story, however.   This case also teaches us about the resources, relationships, and participatory processes that have produced effective organizing to begin with; and it underscores the importance of sustained funding, which has kept pace with the work as it has evolved and grown.