Failed Policies, Destabilization, Disinvestment, and the Necessity for Community-Driven Sustainable School Transformation

• In Event: 72.028 - The Landscape of Education Policy and Politics in Chicago: Neoliberalism, Race, Resistance, and Justice

Abstract

Director of a national grassroots alliance of community organizations, education organizer of a Chicago African American community organization, and leader of struggles against school closings discusses the struggles led by African American and Latino communities over the last 15 years against top-down accountability, mayoral control, and school closings, the effects of these policies on young people, families, and communities of color in particular, and an alternative program of sustainable, community-driven school transformation and democracy in education in Chicago. The commentary puts Chicago’s education movement in the context of a growing national alliance of 36 grassroots community, youth, and parent-led organizations in 21 cities across the U.S. (Journey for Justice Alliance). The Alliance aims to replace the U.S. Department of Education’s punitive, privatizing school improvement strategies with sustainable, community-driven school transformation based on the wisdom and knowledge of communities in collaboration with committed education experts (Journey for Justice Alliance, 2014).
Note: this is a commentary

Author

• Jitu Brown, Kenwood Oakland Community Organization