More on the Progressive Solution

Kevin asks below what the progressive solution is the the entrenched, dysfunctional bureacracies that stifle progress and success in too many of our urban school systems. I don't presume to have the credentials to speak for progressives of liberals on this or any issue: I'm hoping Leo or Matt or Ed Muir and John See or Teacher Ken might be up for this.

It's important to realize, though, that historically progressives have been--far from defenders of dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent school bureacracies--some of the most radical advocates for dismantling schools systems when they disempower poor families and communities and perpetuate inequity for poor and minority children. James Forman, Jr. writes:

The late 1960s also saw the public school bureaucracy challenged by the community control movement, the topic of Part IV. Community control advocates included civil rights organizations, black nationalists, and some members of the liberal political establishment. They demanded that ghetto residents have more control over their neighborhood schools. While not itself a school choice initiative, the community control movement is an important part of the narrative. Like some choice proposals, it was premised on the notion that the public system was unwilling or unable to meet the needs of poor and working-class black children. Community control supporters also shared choice advocates’ belief that taking control from the bureaucracy and giving it to community members was an important part of the solution.

The Community Control movement faced some of the same challenges as other 1960s-era efforts to empower poor communities and foundered due to internal conflict as well as conflict between community activists, school boards, and unions--The latter of which, while often (and sometimes rightly) maligned as a source of urban bureacratic dysfunction, have also been advocates on behalf of teachers and communities against dysfunctional management. Between the high point of 1960s era activism and the 1980s, however, liberalism itself shifted to become much more defensive and invested in protecting the entrenched interests of its allies--including urban bureacrats--rather than expanding opportunity and social justice for the disadvantaged--a phenomenon that Charlie Peters, in his influential "A Neoliberal's Manifesto" cited as a core failing of late 20th century liberalism.

I would argue that a progressive vision of education reform needs to return to principles of parent and community empowerment. Ironically, the people who are doing the most to carry that banner these days are charter school operators and supporters who are often seen as centrists or even conservatives.

Understanding this--the need to empower poor families and communities and the potential of new, community-driven public schools of choice to do that--is why I became a charter school convert. Several years ago, the C.S. Mott Foundation arranged for a group of education policy analysts to visit a group of "small, autonomous schools," (not charters) created by the Oakland school district in response to the activisim and parent organizing efforts of a local community organization whose members were angry about the terrible conditions the Oakland schools had placed their children in. These working class and poor, largely black and Hispanic families were alienated from and disempowered by the local public schools, which had no meaningful connection to the community. Organizing, and persuading the district to create new schools the parents wanted, was the only way for these parents to get not only much better schools for their children, but also the type of ownership of public education that middle-class families take for granted. Those parents in turn became empowered to make other changes in their and their children's lives, and those schools became a cornerstone for building functioning communities in those neighborhoods.

It's important to understand that this is a different, and I believe richer, account of how choice empowers parents than standard market-based arguments, which ignore the importance of community and broader political forces, and tend to cast empowerment solely in terms of increasing poor parents' purchasing power and making them competent consumers, rather than helping them get real political power to influence institutions that affect their lives. Further, it's a view that's not in tension with the progressive belief that improving schools alone is insufficient without broader social and political changes to address the myriad other factors contributing to poor life outcomes for disadvantaged kids, since gaining power to influence public education instiutitons also puts parents in a position to influence other issues that impact their and their children's lives.

I'll admit this is a much messier strategy than the centrist and conservative approaches Kevin describes, and the potential it has to threaten certain established liberal consituencies may actually doom it as a progressive education agenda. But it's happening in places like Los Angeles, where Green Dot charter schools founder Steve Barr has organized thousands of parents to advocate for better schools for their kids, and I'd like to see what it could do, alongside more centrist and conservative reforms already underway, in a place like D.C., where God knows the parents and community need all the empowerment we can get.