As just about everybody now knows, President Barack Obama began his career as a community organizer. Forsaking the more lucrative careers his fellow Columbia University graduates sought, he moved to Chicago and worked with the Developing Communities Project, working with residents, community organizations, and faith-based institutions to bring job opportunities, improved housing, and education reforms to the city’s South Side.

As he explained in his book Dreams from My Father, Obama committed himself to community organizing as a college student and would tell his classmates why he believed so strongly in the idea. “Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots” (Obama 1995, p. 133).

President Obama has retained this view of change. His presidential campaign was a triumph of organizing, in which thousands of volunteers and small donors propelled him to the Democratic nomination and the presidency. And he has made clear he intends to govern through organizing. As he noted in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in August 2008:

You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. (Obama 2008)

Increasingly, this view of change from the community, rather than to a community, is taking hold in education. Many educators and community leaders are recognizing that education reform is not just a technical enterprise, requiring only the right ideas. Rather, they know that it is also a political and social endeavor that takes demand and support by an entire community.

In their landmark 2001 book, Clarence Stone, Jeffrey Henig, and their colleagues (2001) found that the ability of urban school systems to build and sustain substantial improvements depended on the ability of the entire community to come together to address educational needs. They called this ability “civic capacity.”

More recently, researchers at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform examined community organizing efforts in seven cities and found that these efforts contribute to school-level improvements and that successful organizing strategies have contributed to improved student achievement in several sites (Mediratta, Shah & McAlister 2008).

Despite these findings, the idea of community-led reform continues to face resistance and a lack of understanding of its effects. In many cities, large segments of the community find that they have little voice in decisions that affect them and their children’s schools. In some cases, community members who have had advantages are unwilling to share power with underserved communities. In others, reformers have instituted new policies and programs, often with the best of intentions but with little support from the community. With such a weak foundation, they are unlikely to last.

This issue of Voices in Urban Education looks at the role of communities in bringing about and supporting education reform.

• Eva Gold, Maia Cucchiara, and Elaine Simon show how the market-based approach that was implemented in Philadelphia in 2002 thwarted the development of civic capacity.
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• Rodney Hero and Mara Sidney examine the attitudes of Latinos and find little evidence of support for substantial change in education.
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• John Portz, Lana Stein, and Sabina Deitrick the involvement of communities in Boston, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis and how that involvement has affected the course of education reforms in those cities.
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• Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari and Ocynthia Williams discuss a parent-led collaborative in New York City that has succeeded in securing new support for low-performing middle schools.
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• Seema Shah and Anne Henderson look at a student organization in Los Angeles that led a successful effort to institute a more rigorous curriculum in high schools.
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These articles show that community-led efforts to build civic capacity to lead and support reforms are not easy and not always successful. But they suggest some elements that might lead to success. For example, the New York and Los Angeles stories show that building broad coalitions can help advance policy ideas. They also show the importance of data in making the case for improvement and of the role of partners in helping provide the technical support these coalitions need to make their case.

Community organizing and engagement is not the only condition needed for educational improvement. But if educational opportunity and outcomes are to become more equitable, the community voice in improvement is essential. Now, with a community organizer in the White House, the idea just might get more attention.

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