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Category: School, District, and City Change
Alliance for Educational Justice
Summary: The Alliance for Educational Justice (AEJ) is a new national alliance of youth organizing and intergenerational groups working for educational justice. AEJ aims to bring grassroots groups together to bring about changes in federal education policy, build a national infrastructure for the education justice sector, and build the capacity of our organizations and our youth leaders to sustain and grow the progressive movement over the long haul.
Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s Resources on School Change
Summary: The Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) at Brown University is a national policy-research and reform support organization that promotes quality education for all children, especially in urban communities. In promotion of "smart education systems," AISR supports capacity building and education organizing by adults and youth, works directly to support district and school change projects, and conducts and publishes research in part through Voices in Urban Education AISR's quarterly journal.
Boston-area Youth Organizing Project
Summary: BYOP is a live community of youth, supported by adults, who are fighting for justice in the Boston area and beyond! We are involved in local, regional, and national projects for social and youth justice.We are an organization of youth, led by youth and supported by adults, who are united by a common purpose: to increase youth power and create positive social change. To do this, we develop counter-cultural values, build relationships across differences, train and develop leaders, identify key issues of concern and take action for justice.
Bronx Students Release 10-Point List of Demands to Reform NY Public Ed
Summary: Dubbing themselves The Resistance, a group of Bronx students have decided to “Occupy” public education, releasing a 10 point plan for reforming New York City's public school system. Some of their demands include "a healthy, safe environment that does not expect our failure or anticipate our criminality,” class sizes that are “humane and productive,” and “student assessments and evaluations that reflect the variety of ways that we learn and think.”
Summary: Cadwell Collaborative helps schools realize their visions and goals as they become exemplary organizations, where students, teachers, and parents learn and work with their communities to create a hopeful, healthy future through excellent, purposeful, creative work. Cadwell Collaborative believes in the power of young people's intelligence, creativity and innate understanding that all living things are interdependent and interconnected. We believe that all schools can be dynamic, engaging places where adults and children develop the knowledge, skills and values to create a healthy, hopeful future for themselves, their communities, and the planet. Our approach combines excellence in academic content and skills with real world projects and unites strong school cultures with community collaboration and authentic youth engagement.
Chicago Youth Initiating Change
Summary: Chicago Youth Initiating Change is a student-led organization that will ensure every school is designed to provide every student with a relevant and challenging education that prepares us to reach our greatest potential and face the real world. We, the students, with help from our teachers, families and friends, will identify systemic inequalities, injustices, and inefficiencies in our schools and communities and push to resolve them through constructive means.
Summary: Citizens for Public Schools believes society is best served when publicly-funded schools are accountable to the whole community and open to all children. We expect our schools to educate the whole child and, to do so, they need to stop focusing on preparing students for high-stakes exams and start using multiple measures and higher quality assessments that measure 21st century skills. We provide a unique forum for sharing information on critical policy issues, legislation, and education-related litigation. CPS closely monitors state legislative action, providing lawmakers with timely information on how certain bills and budget proposals may affect educational opportunity.
Coming Together: Dem. Inquiry for Teachers & Community Educators (overview)
Summary: This seminar series was inspired by, and designed as a means of continuing, the conversations begun in the NLU Forums about education held in the spring of 2011 (Chicago in These Times). Coming Together supports bridge-building between in school and out of school learning through deep-reaching inquiry processes. The series aims to strengthen relationships between community, school, and museum partners, nurturing a vibrant democratic educational community in Chicago.
Coming Together: Dem. Inquiry for Teachers & Community Educators (resources)
Summary: This seminar series was inspired by, and designed as a means of continuing, the conversations begun in the NLU Forums about education held in the spring of 2011 (Chicago in These Times). Coming Together supports bridge-building between in school and out of school learning through deep-reaching inquiry processes. The series aims to strengthen relationships between community, school, and museum partners, nurturing a vibrant democratic educational community in Chicago.
Coming Together: Dem. Inquiry for Teachers & Community Educators (summary)
Summary: This seminar series was inspired by, and designed as a means of continuing, the conversations begun in the NLU Forums about education held in the spring of 2011 (Chicago in These Times). Coming Together supports bridge-building between in school and out of school learning through deep-reaching inquiry processes. The series aims to strengthen relationships between community, school, and museum partners, nurturing a vibrant democratic educational community in Chicago.
Summary: The Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation's schools and advocates for the human right of every child to a quality education and to be treated with dignity. The DSC unites parents, youth, educators and advocates in a campaign to promote local and national alternatives to a culture of zero-tolerance, punishment and removal.
This website includes a searchable database of research on pushout, school discipline, and positive alternatives, specific resources for youth, parents and educators, and information about our active campaign projects.
Global Best Practices - An Internationally Benchmarked Self-Assessment Tool for Secondary Learning
Summary: Global Best Practices: An Internationally Benchmarked Self-Assessment Tool for Secondary Learning is a practical, action-oriented tool for teachers, school administrators, superintendents, school boards, parents, and other members of a school community. The tool grew out of a recognition that national borders no longer define the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that students need for success, and that New England's high schools may need assistance reviewing learning standards, organizational structures, leadership models, teaching strategies, professional development, and student outcomes in relation to research on high-performing educational systems and practices. Global Best Practices is a first step toward defining, in detail, the characteristics of effective 21st century education and applying them to the creation of new models of teaching, learning, and leading in today's high schools.
Summary: Healthy Schools Campaign, an independent not-for-profit organization, is the leading authority on healthy school environments and a voice for people who care about our environment, our children, and education.Our mission is to advocate for policies and practices that allow all students, teachers and staff to learn and work in a healthy school environment.We prepare school stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, school nurses, administrators, community members and others€ - to become leaders in efforts to create change at the school, district, state and national levels. By working with this diverse group of stakeholders, we advocate for change in the school environment and raise awareness of the ways that the air children breathe, the food they eat and the opportunities they have to be physically active shape their health and learning for a lifetime.
Summary: Hole-in-the-Wall is one such idea, which offers the world a surprisingly fresh perspective on the learning process. Breaking the traditional confines of a school, Hole-in-The-Wall Education Limited (HiWEL) takes the Learning Station to the playground, employs a unique collaborative learning approach and encourages children to explore, learn and just enjoy! As a concept, Hole-in-the-Wall has multiple dimensions and a potential which is virtually limitless. What it offers someone depends on the perspective one is looking from.
Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools
Author: Kids Rethink New Orleans SchoolsSummary: We are a group of students in New Orleans who want to rethink and rebuild our schools after Hurricane Katrina. Our vision is simple: a great education for every kid in our city, no matter the color of their skin, what neighborhood they stay in or how much money their parents make. In early 2006, a group of community organizers, artists, architects, media experts and educators began organizing Rethink. In mid-2006, they brought twenty middle school students (us) together for our first summer school. Every kid was recovering from a hard year that included Hurricane Katrina, losing our houses, leaving the city, and going to new schools away from home. As of 2011, the Rethinkers are in the middle of their 5th year.
King County Youth Development Network
Summary: The King County Youth Development Network (KCYDN) is a collaborative resource and network for local youth development staff, both online and in-person. KCYDN provides a centralized website where youth development workers share resources and best practices. Monthly in-person networking events feature professional panels and specialized training. KCYDN strives to build a supportive, cohesive & cooperative youth development community to ensure that all young people in King County have access to high quality programs and caring, supportive adults.
Summary: The League of Innovative Schools is a new collaboration-driven support network for New England's secondary schools. Membership in the League is open to any interested secondary school - including charter schools and career-and-technical centers - provided that the school community is committed to sustainable improvement and willing to share their practices with colleagues across their state and region. As League members, participating schools will become part of a growing network of secondary institutions working to improve programs, exchange professional expertise, and create more student-centered learning opportunities. In an era of top-down accountability, the League of Innovative Schools is founded on the belief that professional integrity, authentic collaboration, and self-accountability can motivate, sustain, and enhance school improvement.
Summary: The aspirations of Learning Futures: to work with schools to create learning which is deep, authentic and motivational. We hope to achieve this by pursuing deep forms of engagement (by students, schools and their communities) and integration (across formal/informal learning, through innovative use of technology and external adults and peers). The 21st century heralds the possibility of a system redesign that can genuinely respond to the needs of learners and the demands for anytime/anywhere learning, collaborative and independent learning, and personalised learning. Enquiry-based learning is a key component of the Learning Futures model.
Little Village Lawndale High School Campus & Social Justice High School
Summary: On May 13th, 2001 fourteen community residents of Little Village neighborhood in Chicago staged a nineteen day hunger strike demanding the construction of a new high school. The high school had been promised, but was put on hold for monetary issues. Almost four years later the Little Village Lawndale High School Campus opened its doors to four hundred students in the fall of 2005. The campus is comprised of four autonomous small schools: Multicultural Arts H.S., World Language H.S., Social Justice H.S., and Infinity: Math, Science, and Technology High School. Each school has its own principal and teaching staff. Each school houses approximately 385 to 400 students from the neighborhoods of North Lawndale and Little Village.
Our learning communities are specific to each theme of the school, but some facilities are shared. For example, students share the library, swimming pool, courtyards, auditorium, dance studio, child care center, gyms, health center, long distance learning labs, and the literacy center. Thus, students get the advantage of a tight-knit school environment without sacrificing the advantages of a larger facility. The architectural structure of the campus has won numerous awards, and has been replicated in other parts of the country. Students from every school participate in the same sports and after school activities. All four schools are public, neighborhood schools, open to every student within the boundary area. All teachers and staff are Chicago Teacher's Union Members.
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Model School Code from Dignity in Schools Campaign
Summary: The Dignity in Schools Campaign is developing a Model School Code to present a set of recommended policies to schools, districts and legislators to help end school pushout and protect the human right to education, dignity, participation and freedom from discrimination. It includes recommended policies on quality education, parent, youth and educator participation in decision-making, school discipline policies, PBIS and restorative justice, data collection and accountability.