“Show Everyone That the House is on Fire”: Organizing for Educational Justice in Washington, DC

• In Event: Spatial Justice and Educational Geographies of (In)Opportunity

Abstract

Democratic engagement in education offers a potential pathway for equitable and socially-just schools (Douglass Horsford et al., 2019; Ishimaru, 2019). Despite growing calls for shared governance, community-level actors often have minimal, superficial opportunities to influence education policy decisions (Malen, 2011). Existing research has emphasized school boards as key sites of participation (Collins, 2021; Jenkins, 2022) or school-level policies to increase predetermined forms of family and community engagement (Sinclair & Malen, 2021). Such efforts, however, have largely fallen short as they both fail to center the perspectives of non-system actors from racially minoritized backgrounds and, ultimately, maintain existing power structures in decision-making processes (Daramola et al., 2022).

This paper builds on existing research by offering a socio-spatial lens on how community advocates and organizers in Washington, DC participate in and attempt to influence city-wide education decision-making processes. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with community members (N = 22) selected for their roles as education organizers or advocates, we ask: What strategies, tactics, and sets of relationships do community advocates and organizers leverage as they attempt to influence education policy decision-making? How do community advocates and organizers perceive their ability to influence education policy? Our focus on the unique policy ecology of Washington, DC allows for an investigation of how the place of the city shapes patterns of interaction, political dynamics, and the strategies used to influence education policies. As a site of contestation over power and increasing inequality (Harvey, 2012; Lefebvre, 1996), we invoke the spatial frame of the city to understand how efforts to influence education policy reflect and reinforce existing spatial (in)justice (Soja, 2010). In doing so, our paper reveals how non-system actors interact, the strategies they use, and whose interests and issues get attention and rise to the top of the education policy agenda.

We find that the city’s broader ecology influences participation in education decision-making processes, actors’ perception of their power, and whose issues get attention. Educational opportunity is both racialized and spatialized in Washington, DC. Respondents who worked closely with youth and caregivers perceived that those who lived in the city’s wealthiest and whitest neighborhoods had greater opportunities to influence decision-making processes. Respondents further observed that the city’s expansive choice sector created what one respondent called “starkly different educational ecosystems in different parts of the city.” This disparate and fragmented system sometimes led actors to leverage approaches to educational advocacy that focused on individual schools or education sectors rather than a collectivist vision for educational change.

Our paper attends to the conference theme through its examination of how race and place structure opportunity (Delaney, 2002). The spatial and racial distribution of opportunity in Washington, DC underscores the persistence of the color-line (see Du Bois, 1903/2005) in shaping which actors have power to participate meaningfully in education decision-making processes and claim their “right to the city” (Harvey, 2008). In the context of widening inequality and increasing threats to public education and democracy, our paper offers critical insights into the factors that shape democratic participation in education policy.

Authors

• Alisha Butler, Wesleyan University

• Kristin Sinclair, Georgetown University