Transformative Accountability: Organizing for Community Schools in Philadelphia

• In Event: Can Community Schools Be a Source of Democracy and Liberation? Critical Perspectives From Four Cities

Abstract

Overview & Objectives
Philadelphia residents have long fought against neoliberal urban education policy and practices, including charterization, mass closures, and extreme budget austerity. This presentation draws upon a critical participatory action research (CPAR) project that examined a citywide coalition organizing for community schools, of which the authors were members. In this presentation, we extend earlier work (Authors, in press) to explore the role of accountability in education organizing for building collective power and community control. Our findings demonstrate the critical need for education movements to develop new processes and metrics of accountability to effectively organize for transformative community-driven education.

Theory & Method
CPAR is a “from the ground up” epistemological and methodological approach to research committed to democratic principles of equity and justice (Fals Borda, 1979; Torre, 2014). Involving community members in designing and conducting research begins with the assumption that marginalized communities possess critical knowledge for defining problems, innovating solutions, and evaluating impact. Our conceptual framework draws upon feminist and transformative conceptualizations of accountability as a relational process that serves to transform oppressive political conditions through a practices that restore, repair, and enhance community control and self-determination (Durazo, 2012; INCITE!, 2003; Kim, 2012; Russo, 2018).

Data
The CPAR two-year project began in January 2017 and utilized the following qualitative methods: field notes, storytelling, surveys, interviews, and focus groups. We are conducting an inductive and deductive thematic analysis of the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). First, we identified themes at the surface level of meaning. Second, we are examining the data guided by theory-driven questions, such as: How do participants talk about accountability? Accountability for what, by whom, to whom, and to what ends?

Findings
We present our emergent findings as two interrelated narratives to illustrate potential benefits and practices of accountability processes for building power and community control. The first narrative focuses on the research collective practices. The second tells the story of our experiences designing and facilitating the living curriculum of the leadership program. The iterative design of the research praxis generated key insights that informed changes to the living curriculum and experimentation with new practices that re-oriented us toward the original vision of transformative community-driven public schools. Together, the narratives provide insights and strategies for generating catalytic possibilities for organizers, coalitions, researchers, educators, and communities fighting to preserve and transform public education for the public good.

Significance
Organizing in coalitions and CPAR are different types of collaboration whose success and power depends upon people’s ability to build meaningful trusting relationships across difference. We view community schools through the same lens to consider their potential for generating new types of relationships between schools, communities, families, and students. Creating spaces for those invested in a sustainable culture for engaging in public education is essential for defining new structures of governance and mechanisms of accountability that restore and reinforce the strengths and power of students, families, and communities. This space of catalytic possibility can shift the movement into the future.

Author

• Kristen P. Goessling, The Pennsylvania State University - Brandywine