Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE)

• In Event: Scholar Collectives Working for Social Justice in Education

Abstract

CReATE has been a catalyst for teachers, activists, and scholars, to mobilize themselves
in common cause to fight for public schooling as a human right against a domineering marketbased
model of school change and the corporate take-over of public education. Over several
years, we have issued research briefs, policy statements, and fact sheets based on reliable social
science on a wide range of issues from vouchers to charter schools, from high stakes
standardized testing to teachers unions. We have met with lawmakers, attended and testified at
school board meetings, and partnered with the Chicago Teachers Union and activist groups as a
“response team” on current issues like fighting for counselors and nurses in every school,
struggling for full arts funding, getting the Chicago police out of public schools, and educating
teacher education students about the importance of teachers unions. We’re involved in many
political/reform formations individually, and we unite and work together in a range of
permutations for specific strategic and tactical campaigns. We are focused now on
pushing/supporting/amplifying the momentum around abolition and #BLM in schools and
universities. We continue to assemble our collective capacity to build stronger movements for
equity and justice in education, with a particular focus on creating networks that have an
enhanced capacity to speak collectively and publicly and work in solidarity with our
communities to reframe the public debate about public education, raise critical consciousness,
and mobilize ourselves and our resources to act.

Author

• William C. Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago