- Community Organizing and School Reform, Ford Foundation, (2009-2011)The project involves conducting case studies of six organizing efforts that are making a significant impact on education reform. Our goal is to “dig deep” in order to reveal and analyze how organizing works to contribute to equity-oriented education reform in low income communities. We will produce individual case studies of each effort, a paper drawing lessons across the cases, and workshop training materials for organizations and school systems interested in fostering organizing efforts. The first year of the project focused on the preparation of the research project and the conduct of field research. The second year of the project focused on data analysis, write-up of the individual case studies and the development of the cross-case analysis. The final segment (of 18 month duration) is planned in order to revise the case studies into book form, to complete the production of teaching cases and workshop materials, and to disseminate our findings via these materials as well as holding sessions at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association and at a national conference on community organizing and school reform at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
- Study of Education Organizing Project, C.S. Mott Foundation , (2009-2011)The project involves conducting case studies of six organizing efforts that are making a significant impact on education reform. Our goal is to “dig deep” in order to reveal and analyze how organizing works to contribute to equity-oriented education reform in low income communities. We will produce individual case studies of each effort, a paper drawing lessons across the cases, and workshop training materials for organizations and school systems interested in fostering organizing efforts. The first year of the project focused on the preparation of the research project and the conduct of field research. The second year of the project focused on data analysis, write-up of the individual case studies and the development of the cross-case analysis. The final segment (of 18 month duration, under consideration here) is planned in order to revise the case studies into book form, to complete the production of teaching cases and workshop materials, and to disseminate our findings via these materials as well as by holding sessions at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association and at a national conference on community organizing and school reform at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
- Community Organizing and School Reform, Ford Foundation, (2008-2009)The project involves conducting case studies of six organizing efforts that are making a significant impact on education reform. Our goal is to “dig deep” in order to reveal and analyze how organizing works to contribute to equity-oriented education reform in low income communities. We will produce individual case studies of each effort, a paper drawing lessons across the cases, and training materials for organizations and school systems interested in fostering organizing efforts. The first year of the project focused on the preparation of the research project and the conduct of field research. The second year of the project focuses on data analysis and write-up.
- Community Organizing and Social Reform, Spencer Foundation, (2008-2010)This project supports the second year of a research project studying community organizing efforts aimed at school reform in low-income communities. Community organizing has emerged as an important strategy to organize the concerns and create effective opportunities for voice among parents and the broader public, an important focus of that program. By community organizing for school reform, we mean efforts by community-based organizations to engage parents, community residents, young people and educators in collective action to improve public schools and to address inequities in public education (e.g., Oakes & Rogers, 2005; Shirley, 1997; Warren, 2005). Recent research has demonstrated that organizing efforts can build the capacity of schools and improve educational outcomes in low-income communities (Mediratta, Shah, & McAlister, 2008). But we know less about how organizing efforts create change and the contextual factors that shape their outcomes. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the methods, processes, and capacities through which community organizing works to create and support school reform. We will develop this analysis through conducting a multi-case study of six community organizing efforts that have made significant accomplishments in building parent and community participation in school reform in low-income communities.
