Changing the Political Equation: Urban and Suburban Students’ Advocacy for School Funding Equity

• In Event: The Intersection of Student Voice and Educational Leadership: Opportunities and Obstacles

Abstract

Objectives and Purposes:
The intention of this paper is to examine how state legislators respond to youth attempting to create an alternative politics. The youth are members of the “Metropolitan Community Project,” a partnership for educational equality between an urban and a suburban high school. The paper investigates how state officials receive the students’ more expansive definition of community and participation in the political process.
Literature and Theoretical Perspectives:
To frame the youth’s interactions with legislators, the paper employs the theoretical perspective of relational power: the strength—derived from working with others—to accomplish common aims (Chambers, 2004; Gendron, 2006; Warren, 2005, 2011). When urban and suburban students come together, and ask state legislators to act in coalition with them, they are approaching politics relationally, in contrast to the polarizing discourse and interest group competition that characterizes much of our current politics. The question is whether political leaders will respect and accept this offer of partnership.
Study Context, Methods, and Data Sources:
The Metropolitan Community Project includes a low-income, predominantly Latino public high school in Chicago and a very high-income, predominantly white public high school in the suburbs north of the city. The participating high school students (n=32) visited each other’s schools and homes while investigating educational inequality. For their action campaign, the students wrote about their firsthand exposure to school disparities. Their letters were copied and mailed to every state legislator in Illinois, with a request for a meeting to discuss school funding equity. Thirteen legislators responded to these meeting requests, which started in June and will continue throughout the fall. A rotating group of students and teachers from each school visit the legislators at their district offices. The qualitative research includes fieldnotes of the legislative visits and interviews with the student participants.
Results:
In the four legislative meetings that have taken place so far, several themes have emerged. The legislators:
• Engaged with students in a respectful and professional manner.
• Displayed varying empathy with urban school conditions, depending on their district’s location.
• Prioritized other political issues, like state employee pensions, ahead of school funding equity.
• Minimized, in some cases, the importance of school funding and resources.
• Presented a ‘realist’ portrait of state politics that communicated the obstacles to change.
• Pointed to potential reform areas, including a new education funding task force and a state progressive income tax.
• Attempted to displace some of their responsibility on the media, the Chicago Public Schools, or the students themselves.
• Expressed willingness to work with the other legislators students are meeting with on school funding.
Scholarly Significance:
In their meetings with state legislators, the students modeled a collaborative approach to increasing opportunity in the state’s educational system. Their youth, personal stories, and direct, comparative experiences in each other’s schools presented a perspective that legislators rarely hear. Urban and suburban students’ advocacy for school funding conveys a break from partisanship and conventional wisdom, offering a new politics for educational equality.

Author

• Cynthia Taines, Northern Illinois University