Center for Education Organizing
Printer-friendly versionThe Center for Education Organizing (CEO) supports and amplifies local and national demands for educational justice in underserved communities. The CEO integrates the expertise of a university-based research center, years of on-the-ground experience supporting education organizing, and our longstanding reputation as a seasoned convener of diverse education stakeholders.
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PROFILES IN SCHOOL TRANSFORMATION
This online publication highlights seven successful school transformations that have not involved closing schools. On September 24, 2011, the Coalition for Educational Justice brought together parents, teachers, district administrators, and others for a conference to learn about successful alternatives to school closings. In a day-long series of workshops, educators from around the country presented data and stories about their work to improve student performance. The Center for Education Organizing documented the strategies presented and developed brief profiles describing the basic approaches to culture and academic change at the schools represented at the conference.
PARENT POWER
PARENT POWER: Education Organizing in NYC is a 35-minute film chronicling 15 years of organizing for school improvment in New York City. It starts from a community base, builds a collaboration with the teachers union and eventually forms a powerful ciytwide campaign coalition. The Center produced the film to support the work of education organizing groups across the country, and will make it availabe for local use.
About the film, see the film, host a screening, praise, trailer and clips
CEO staff provide research, policy analysis, and training to support individual groups and national networks to meaningfully engage in education reform. The CEO also facilitates alliance building among education organizing groups, and between those groups and other stakeholders such as civil rights and advocacy organizations, teachers unions, academics, and education researchers.
Current work includes:
- AISR’s CEO staff are helping the American Federation of Teachers develop a community outreach and engagement plan. AISR will assess existing programs, identify new capacities, knowledge, and community partners the union locals will need in order to carry out this work, and develop a two-year plan for sites, activities, and resources.
- CEO staff prepared the policy brief What’s Missing from the Debate on Seniority? to inform the intense current debates on the role of seniority in teacher layoffs. This brief examines the history and intent of seniority rules and the issues currently being raised. The CEO holds that addressing seniority rules is part of the picture, but that the narrow focus on seniority and bargaining rights diverts attention from the need for broader changes and investments to support high-quality teaching and the equitable distribution of a district’s best educators.
- CEO staff prepared three resource sheets for parents and community members on school discipline, to accompany the policy brief Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice, written by Daniel Losen of the Civil Rights Project and published by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado. The brief, a companion NEPC brief with suggested legislative changes, and the resource sheets were released on October 5, 2011, as part of the Dignity in Schools Campaign National Week of Action. > More information, press conference video, news coverage