ACORN, Organizing, and Education

My writing on community organizing now mostly appears on Open Left. But a couple of my fellow bloggers asked me to write something on ACORN, the national community organizing group that is currently under attack for its voter registration work.

The right wing is attacking ACORN not only because of its voter registration work, but because it is one of if not THE most important community organizing groups in America.

Unlike other national groups, ACORN generates its membership by knocking on doors, one after the other, not by organizing organizations like churches. As a result, its local membership is usually more broadly representative of poor and working-class people in America. Also unlike other groups, it participates actively in national campaigns and policy debates and does not just operate as an umbrella training and support organization.

ACORN is not a 501(c)3 organization, which means it can integrate political AND issue work, something most other organizing groups cannot do. ACORN is also one of the publishers of Social Policy.

ACORN and Education

ACORN has done extensive work on education, including running their own schools, national policy studies and reports, local studies (pdf), and, of course, direct . action for educational . change.

This report (pdf) is a few years old, now, but gives a sense of the range of educational issues ACORN engages with.

Note: I haven't had much direct involvement with ACORN, and I'm not really up on their current activities.

Those new to my organizing posts may want to read Part I and Part II of "What is Organizing?".

Technology in education: a ground-map, part a (revision 2)

CAC comment: This is an edited version of my original post from 9/13/08, taking into account comments received (thanks for those!) and some further thinking about this topic.


For this month's "Monthly Forum" (yes I know I'm late to start this was last month's topic), I'd like to get a conversation going about the role of technology in education.

For myself, I'm trying to develop a "ground-map of the province" (if you will allow me an obscure reference to Dewey) of issues related to technology in education. This is part of a project that will result in a chapter on philosophical issues related to technology in education for a forthcoming book to which I've been asked to contribute.

Key question #1: What is educational technology?

Technology is "the application of science (or knowledge) to meet objectives or to solve problems." (source)

Technology is not science itself, which is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and the sorting out of which knowledge is privileged within the academy society, by certain people who call themselves "scientists," or by policy-makers. While science clearly has a role in education (both because we want to have a public that understands its methods, issues, and major findings, and because we want to know how people learn best so we can design education to be efficient and effective), this essay isn't dealing with science per se, but with its application. When we apply science/knowledge to solve educational problems, we are (often? always?) using technology. On this broad definition of technology, schooling is largely a technological enterprise.

(Schooling is the systematic formal process whereby the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people are shaped to meet adult expectations. Education is the [largely informal] experiential process through which a person comes to know and be who s/he is. These definitions were developed by my FND 510 class this quarter.)

Technologies used in schooling include classrooms, chalkboards, books, podiums, graded classrooms, chair-desk, bells, bell schedules, school buses, school buildings, playgrounds, athletic fields, band rooms, band instruments, colored chalk, the architecture of schools, p.a. systems, teacher certification systems, the ways we "divide" subjects into "disciplines," testing (and other assessment approaches of all kinds), school districting, "catchment" areas, curriculum plans, "standards" statements, and many many other activities/processes/devices/frameworks. It is important to emphasize, "technology" isn't just things, but the systems of ideas that legitimate and constrain the use of things. On this expanded notion of technology, we can say that "schooling" is the application of technology to make mass education the mass alteration of the behaviors [and ideas] of [mostly young] people not only possible, but affordableand effective.

(Of course, it's also the application of technology to do things schooling achieves other things as well, such as warehousing kids, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)

Related to this, technologies can roughly (thanks Jason!) be divided into those that are "old" (that is, taken for granted as being "necessary" for schooling) and those that are new (that is, still being negotiated in terms of their role--or lack thereof--in schools). This, of course, depends on one's perspective, since a technology that is taken for granted by a young person might be still be considered to have an unsettled role to an older person. Similarly, technologies that are taken for granted in wealthier, suburban or private schools (such as interactive whiteboards) are often considered exotic or a luxury in poorer, urban schools. Such differences in attitude are never about whether a particular technology is really needed for education; they are always about whether they deserve to be funded or mandated for all schools--again, the central question of educational policy.

But we don't tend to talk about this question as if it were a question about technology. Instead, we limit our explicit discussion of technologies to a subset of those that are applied to policy questions about schooling, as if educational technology policy was only "about" relatively new, digital technologies, especially those tools and approaches that are not yet universal (or nearly universal) in their application to schools. "Technology," then, is used as a euphemism for "things that we're still trying to decide whether we need," or "things that only some schools can currently afford."

This limitation of the application of the concept of technology tends to draw attention away from certain critical perspectives (such as those of Michel Foucault, Neil Postman, or Michael Apple) which talk about, for example "technologies of [political] control." Surely these critical perspectives are justified in used of the word "technology," just as much as the common person is justified (in some ways) in limiting discussion of technologies to what I've described above as "digital technologies." What's important is realizing that any limitation of the word "technology" to particular types of technologies has both motivations and consequences, which should be examined. Thus, the limitation of the discussion to "digital technologies" tends to take OFF the table many of the other things I've listed, such as bell schedules and P.A. systems, even though THOSE technology are pernicious and omnipresent in schools.

I guess wWhat I'm saying is, the question of what we MEAN by "technology" is ahas political oneimplications that perhaps logically antecede questions about the use of particular technologies in particular situations. [However, let me add here, without going into it in greater detail, that a "technology" can not be completely separated from the "use" of that technology, because, well, a technology without an application in a specific situation isn't a technology at all.]

Key question #2: What criteria do we use in evaluating educational technologies?

Like all technologies, each item on the list I just generated above can be critiqued from several many different perspectives, using many different criteria. Among such criteria for criticism include effectiveness (in reaching whatever objectives are desired), efficiency, humanity, cost-effectiveness, opportunity costs, ease-of-use, standardizability (can they applied in a consistent manner), teachability (can teachers/administrators/students actually learn to use them), fairness, beauty, "fit," conformity to [public] values of all kinds, carbon footprint, etc. etc.

(For the general public, probably, the most important criterion is whether the use of a technology conduces to the achievement of [whatever measure of success is given credence, for example] higher standardized test scores. But that criterion is hotly disputed by many.)

Given the importance of the choice of criteria to apply, perhaps I'd say the essential question of educational policy is the question of which criteria to apply to evaluating the technologies of education, because this question is basic to other questions such as what resources should we make available to all schools or all students, or to which students, and why. A key corollary of this insight is that anyone who merely argues for or against using a given technology without spelling out exactly what criteria go into (or are being ignored in) making that recommendation is not to be trusted without further investigation.

Okay, enough revision for now. Stay tuned for Part B, where I'll talk about some of the political, cultural, and ideological forces at work in discussions about educational technology, including those that are ostensibly concerned with student learning.

Intelligence and Genes? Too Many Genes, Not Much "Intelligence"

Scientific American article on intelligence and genetics.

Of course questions about intelligence are inherently linked to questions about whether "intelligence" as some single factor actually exists. The genetic data seems to support the general argument that "intelligence" is so complicated and multifaceted that there isn't any such thing as "intelligence."

That's my take.

The Community Agenda for Schools

In fairness, apparently The Community Agenda for America's Public Schools is the other major reform agenda that has recently emerged (along with the Broader, Bolder group discussed in the last post).

At the core of the Community Agenda are a set of recommendations for collaborations between schools and "the community":

This idea�fully embraced�would make all Americans responsible and accountable for excellent schools and the positive development of all our young people. Every institution that influences positive outcomes for children and youth must be part of the agenda�schools, families, government, youth development organizations, health, mental health and family support agencies, higher education and faith-based institutions, community organizing and community development groups, unions, and business. Each brings assets and expertise; each must change how it does its work; and all must work together to close the opportunity gap

The recommendations (listed below in edited form) mostly, but not entirely, seem to define "community" as "institutions that serve the community." One problem with this definition is that these institutions are generally led by people who don't come from or live in impoverished communities. Nonetheless, it would be nice if local institutions worked better together. The idea of "one stop shops" for services, and school based services--especially health services--seems important.

But this seems to assume that these institutions haven't already been trying to work together to one extent or another. Whether we like it or not, the fact is that in impoverished urban areas, at least, schools, as institutions, tend not to work and play well with others for a whole range of reasons. It is difficult to mandate "community participation" for schools just as it is difficult to mandate "better pedagogy." These relationships are complex, context-bound, and often personality driven. Many if not most "collaborations" between schools and communities actually involve local agencies using school space for after school programs, for example, but not really having that much substantively to do with the actual institution of the school. It's not clear to me that urging schools to engage more with the community will end up having much more overall effect than efforts to urge teachers to teach better.

There are examples of effective inter-agency collaboration, as the group's call to action notes. But can these be broadly and widely replicated with any speed in any effective way? I'm not sure, and it's certainly not where I'd put my marbles if I had any. (But see Schorr's book for the best discussion of the challenges of replication that I now of. It actually discusses one of the community collaborations noted in the Community Agenda statement. Anyone out there know of more recent work?)

Furthermore, the recommendation for more effective "involvement" between schools and communities more broadly seems pretty "pie in the sky." In a review of the literature around community-school relationships, I could find NO example of a broad based, replicable model for fostering this kind of involvement. Schools as institutions are almost completely uninterested in opening themselves up to real engagement by people and groups who are actually located IN impoverished communities (at least in the urban literature I looked at). I have talked to some people who were grumpy about this finding--but aside from anecdotal stories, no one has actually presented a coherent argument to me about why I am wrong. (I'd love to be wrong--but I doubt I am). The point isn't that schools can't do better--see Joyce L. Epstein's work, for example. The point is that what they do seem to be able to do doesn't seem likely to produce robust shifts in community participation understood in the broadest sense. Without "authentic" participation by any definition, this could easily become a project designed to teach those poor parents how to raise their kids.

I did find that engagements between schools and independent groups designed to enhance community empowerment (among others) did sometimes seem to be effective. And the plan does mention community organizing groups among others. But except in rare cases, community organizing groups simply do not have the current capacity to engage with a broad range of school in our cities. Many can barely stay alive in the first place. One would have to imagine how significant resources could be put into these organizing groups--$ that does not flow through the schools who have little pragmatic interest in reducing their own control. It's hard to imagine how this would happen. And there is little in the recommendations that gives me hope that the groups

Given this, the differences between this model and the Broader, Bolder model seem limited to the Community Agenda's focus on community relationships as the central tool, and on a more limited focus on the importance of non-school issues on student achievement in the Community Agenda model. The problem with this focus on community is that it could easily draw emphasis away from the need for services and resources, which is vastly more needed than the coordination of these services (which mostly don't exist), although coordination would be wonderful. In fact, there seems to me to be something of a disconnect between their Strategies That Work list, and the Policy Recommendations that follow these (listed below).

Further, there is less acknowledgement here, than in the Broader, Bolder plan that non-school resources are clearly the most important and effective place to intervene if we really want to make an impact on achievement and on the flourishing of children more broadly. Talk about community collaboration is cheaper than actually finding the kinds of resources discussed by the Broader, Bolder folks. Ironically, this is why people talk so much about schools as a solution to poverty--because education is cheaper than efforts to actually solve poverty, because talk about education is pretty non-political, and because talk, by itself, without actually doing much for schools is even cheaper.

So I'm much more drawn to the Broader, Bolder vision than the Community Agenda vision. The Broader, Bolder folks seem to be addressing the core challenges of education, the challenges that we most need to address, even though it will inevitably be more difficult to actually make change in these areas.

That's my initial response. What do others think?

The Community Agenda's "Policy Recommendations":

• Results-focused Partnerships

Through results-focused partnerships, the resources of all government and community institutions can be aligned and applied in a more coordinated and effective fashion.

• Youth, Parent, School, and Community Involvement

The people and places affected by public policy must have a voice in its implementation. We propose that policy be developed to enable youth, parents, and community leaders as well as school leaders, including principals and teachers, to be partners in the planning and oversight of school reform and community initiatives.

• Community-School Coordination

Effective coordination is essential at the school site. Research shows that students can and will achieve when resources to address their academic and other needs are tailored, coordinated, and accessible. We recommend policies that provide staff in every school who will coordinate results-focused partnerships, integrate school and community resources based on individual student needs, and engage parents as well as other community members.

• A Broad-Based Accountability Framework

A single standardized test should not be the only basis for judging schools or students.

• Public Access to Data

• Professional Development and Capacity-Building

• Increased Investments

TPM Discussion of Book on Geoffrey Canada

This week, TPM Cafe is holding a book discussion of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America, which I mentioned a few days ago. I haven't had time to read much of the discussion, and I haven't read the book, but this is likely an important book at a critical moment in our thinking about educational reform.

Publisher's Weekly description (via Amazon):

New York Times journalist Tough profiles educational visionary Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children's Zone�currently serving more than 7,000 children and encompassing 97 city blocks�represents an audacious effort to end poverty within underserved communities.

Canada's radical experiment is predicated upon changing everything in these communities�creating an interlocking web of services targeted at the poorest and least likely to succeed children: establishing programs to prepare and support parents, a demanding k-8 charter school and a range of after-school programs for high school students.

Tough adeptly integrates the intensely personal stories of the staff, students and teachers of the Children's Zone with expert opinions and the broiling debates over poverty, race and education. The author's admiration for Canada and his social experiment is obvious yet tempered by journalistic restraint as he summarizes the current understanding of the causes of poverty and academic underperformance�and their remedies. Smoothly narrated, affecting and heartening, this book gives readers a solid look at the problems facing poor communities and their reformers, as well as good cause to be optimistic about the future.

Study about Teens, Video Games, and Civic Engagement

Via Peter Levine, a new study from the MacArthur Foundation about teens and video games.

The lede:

Game playing is universal, diverse, often involves social interaction, and can cultivate teen civic engagement.

. . . . .

Game playing can incorporate many aspects of civic and political life.

• 76% of youth report helping others while gaming.
• 44% report playing games where they learn about a problem in society

Broader, Bolder Approach to Education

Can't say I love the name, but this task force of the leading lights in education and more has coalesced around the idea that we need to look beyond schools to solve the "education" problem. Apparently the website went live on June 10, 2008.

It's about time.

Of course, it's not clear how they can make this happen.

Their two principles:

First, conventional education policy making focuses on learning that occurs in formal school settings during the years from kindergarten through high school. The new approach recognizes the centrality of formal schooling, but it also recognizes the importance of high-quality early childhood and pre-school programs, after-school and summer programs, and programs that develop parents� capacity to support their children�s education. It seeks to build working relationships between schools and surrounding community institutions.

Second, the broader, bolder approach pays attention not only to basic academic skills and cognitive growth narrowly defined, but to development of the whole person, including physical health, character, social development, and non-academic skills, from birth through the end of formal schooling. It assigns value to the new knowledge and skills that young people need to become effective participants in a global environment, including citizenship, creativity, and the ability to respect and work with persons from different backgrounds.

Their general argument:

More than a half century of research has documented a powerful association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement. Weakening that association is the fundamental challenge facing America's education policymakers.

The nation's education policy has typically been crafted around the expectation that schools alone can offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status on learning, a theory embodied in the No Child Left Behind law, which passed with bipartisan support in 2001 and is now up for reauthorization. Schools can ameliorate some of the impact of social and economic disadvantage on achievement. Improving our schools, therefore, continues to be a vitally important strategy for promoting upward mobility and for working toward equal opportunity and overall educational excellence.

Evidence demonstrates, however, that achievement gaps based on socioeconomic status are present before children even begin formal schooling. Despite impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially, consistently, and sustainably close these gaps.

Nevertheless, there is solid evidence that policies aimed directly at education-related social and economic disadvantages can improve school performance and student achievement. The persistent failure of policymakers to act on that evidence � in tandem with a schools-only approach � is a major reason why the association between disadvantage and low student achievement remains so strong.