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Parent Power Viewers Guide 2
Viewers Guide
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Written and edited by Norm Fruchter and Orya Hyde-Keller
Designed by Carole Jeung and Haewon Kim
Cover photo by Jason Masten
Interior photos by Jason Matsen and Jose Gonzalez
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform is a national
policy-research and reform-support organization, affiliated
with Brown University, which focuses on improving
conditions and outcomes for all students in urban public
schools, particularly those serving disadvantaged children.
The Institutes vision is the transformation of traditional
school systems into smart education systems that developand integrate high-quality learning opportunities in all areas
of students livesat school, at home, and in the community.
For more information, visit www.annenberginstitute.org.
Produced in collaboration with Active Voice. Special thanks
to Ellen Schneider, founder and executive director, and
Dina de Veer, story and policy coordinator. For more
information on Active Voice, visit www.activevoice.net.
2011 Annenberg Institute for School Reform
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When I think of things around me, it makes me sad, and I want to cry.
But then I stop, and it gets me angry, and thats what brings about the change.
Carol Boyd, Parent Leader
Viewers Guide
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3 A Message from the Filmmakers
4 New York City Parent Organizing Strategies
4 Engage key neighborhood organizations
5 Effectively utilize research and data
6 Appropriately navigate the collaboration/confrontation dynamic
7 Build local and citywide coalitions
8 Build effective organizational structures and cultures
9 Develop relationships with the teachers union
10 Enlist intermediary support
11 Frequently Asked Questions
13 About the Center for Education Organizing
Table of Contents
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Parent Power Viewers Guide 3
A Message from the FilmmakersParent Powerchronicles fifteen years of parent organizing to improve public schools
across New York City. These efforts were supported by organizers and researchers from the
Annenberg Institute for School Reforms Community Organizing and Engagement division,1
who together with New York City parent leaders created this film. The organizing portrayed
in Parent Poweris motivated by the following beliefs:
that preserving and strengthening public education is essential to making our nation
more equitable and democratic;
that the communities most affected by the current economic downturnlow-income
and working-class urban neighborhoodsalso consistently suffer the chronic failures
of public education; and
that these communities, and the teachers who work in their schools, are the
constituencies with the potential power to demand, support, and sustain the scale
of education reform necessary to effectively address these challenges.
This Viewers Guide is designed to enhance your use of Parent Powerin your education
organizing, whether you employ the film for large-scale inspirational screenings, in strategy
sessions with your organizers and leaders, as an introduction to education organizing when
you are initiating new efforts, or in whatever other ways you find the film useful. The first
section on New York City organizing strategies describes the approaches that guided successful
parent organizing in New York City and is accompanied by key questions to consider when
formulating your own organizing strategies and goals. The next section answers frequently
asked questions that may arise when you screen the film. The final section presents information
about the Center for Education Organizing, a new unit of the Annenberg Institute for School
Reform that encourages, supports, and links education organizers across the nation.
For help in planning an effective small-group or community screening, please see our screening
toolkit, which you can download at: www.annenberginstitute.org/parentpower.
We made Parent Powerto provide an inspiring example of successful education organizing.
We hope this guide will help you generate actionable discussion about Parent Power
and build campaigns that improve the schools serving your neighborhoods and your children.
Frequently Used Acronyms in
Parent Power
PAC: Parent Action Committee
CEJ: The New York City Coalition
for Educational Justice
NSA: New Settlement Apartments
CC9: Community Collaborativeto Improve District 9 Schools
PS 64: Public School 64
IESP: New York University Institute
for Education and Social Policy, the
intermediary that initially supported
the organizing the film chronicles.
AISR: The Annenberg Institute for School
Reform at Brown University, a national
policy-research and reform support
organization.
CO&E: Annenberg Institute for SchoolReforms Community Organizing and
Engagement division, the group that
replaced IESP and provided much
of the support for the organizing the
film portrays.
1The organizing staff was originally part of the New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy,
but disaffiliated from NYU in 2006 and joined the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
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What is a community-based
organization (CBO)?
These nonprofits provide services and
supports for local neighborhoods. They
are usually directed by local activists and
guided by a board of local residents. Funding
for CBO work comes from a variety of city,
state, and federal grants, and many CBOs
have developed fund-raising strategies to
secure significant nonprofit and private
donations as well. CBOs support their
neighborhoods by developing, rehabilitating,
and managing local affordable housing;
implementing neighborhood redevelopment
projects; offering health services,
employment counseling, youth recreation,
and educational and social programs for
young people, including after-school
programs; and organizing residents to
improve a wide range of local conditions.
Engage key neighborhood organizations
I met an organizer from the New Settlement Apartments Parent Action
Committee who, I recall, just had pit bull persistence. She would not
go away. You need to come to this meeting. We need your input.
This affects you. So, finally, I went. And the rest has been history.
Carol Boyd, Parent Leader
Successful parent organizing depends on mobilizing local support for schooling improvement.
The organizing chronicled in Parent Powerbegan with efforts to encourage local community-
based organizations (CBOs) to take on education organizing as part of their neighborhood work
(see sidebar for more on CBOs). In parent organizing efforts in other cities, that local base may
be religious congregations or neighborhood action groups supported by dues-paying residents.
Essentially, all organizing begins with targeting and attempting to mobilize specific local
constituencies.
There were several reasons why CBOs were appropriate organizations to spur education reform
in New York City. Because CBOs are politically and formally independent of local school systems
and city governments, they can hire and fund organizers to help parents improve their local
schools without facing the constraining pressures that principals and administrators often exerton parent-teacher associations. Moreover, many CBOs have long reputations for neighborhood
service; webs of relationships with community residents, leaders, and elected officials; and
networks of connection with other neighborhood institutions to draw on. They also have an
existing infrastructureoffices, meeting spaces, telephones, and computerswhich can help
to enable and support parent organizing.
Therefore, the New York City organizing strategy focused on convincing local CBOs, such as
the New Settlement Apartments, to undertake education organizing to improve their local
schools as a necessary component of their commitments to revitalizing their neighborhoods.
New Settlement Apartments vision, for example, was not simply to rebuild Mt. Edens destroyed
housing, but to restore the social fabric of the neighborhood. Organizing for high-quality
neighborhood schools fit well with this mission.
KEY QUESTIONS
Can you identify CBOs or other civic or service groups in your neighborhoods that
might be prepared to take on education organizing?
How can you identify groups you dont already know about that might support
education organizing?
1
New York City Parent Organizing Strategies
Seven key strategies guided the New York City education organizing
chronicled in Parent Power. While education organizing in your communities
will often confront unique situations that require different approaches,
the following strategies employed in New York City may prove helpful to you.
Ana Maria Archila, Co-director,
Make the Road
Ana Maria founded and led the Latin
American Integration Center for many
years until it merged with Make the Road,
a tri-borough immigrant organizing and
service center.
The organizations that came together to
create CEJ had real alignment in terms of
who should be the drivers of change in
communities: ordinary people who know
the real problems and ordinary people who
actually have ideas about what the solutions
should look like.
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Appropriately manage the collaboration/
confrontation dynamic
Public school officials took over our meeting. And when they took
over our meeting, it no longer became our meeting. It became
their meeting. They made us out to be bad parents. And I think that
was a turning point for me, because after that, I vowed that I was
going to learn as much as I can.
Cynthia Cummings, PAC Leader
Finding the appropriate balance between confrontational and collaborative strategies bedevils
many education organizing groups. Directly confronting school officials with parent demands
for schooling improvement is often necessary but can also so antagonize the targeted
administrators that they refuse to engage. Similarly, collaboration between organized parent
groups and school officials is critical to schooling improvement but can easily become
administration controlled and carried out for forms sake if the threat of confrontation
is not maintained. Figuring out when and how to collaborate and when and how to confront
proved crucial to the organizing efforts in New York City.
The PAC began its organizing hoping to collaborate with local school officials. When the PAC
presented their research findings to the PS 64 principal and the local superintendent, for
example, members were expecting an acknowledgement of the schools problems and an
agreement to work together to improve the schools outcomes. Instead the PACs concerns
were dismissed by the principal and the local districts superintendent. This dismissal initially
intimidated the PAC, but the parents regrouped and escalated their strategyfrom efforts at
collaboration to direct and dramatic confrontation. The PAC staged demonstrations at district
school board meetings, used their research findings to highlight PS 64s failure and demand
improvement, engaged local and citywide media to amplify their message, and ultimately took
their demands to the citywide school board and the citys schools chancellor. The PACs strategic
escalation succeeded in replacing PS 64s principal and projecting the need to improve thedistricts struggling schools onto a citywide school reform agenda. In this case, confrontation
proved necessary when collaboration was rejected by schooling administrators.
But collaboration can often yield successful outcomes when contending parties are willing to
engage. CC9s founding groups stressed the importance of collaborating not only with local
schools and school districts, but also with the citywide school system leadership and the
teachers union. As the film shows, those collaborations produced the Lead Teacher Program
as a pilot in ten District 9 schools. Similarly, CEJ worked hard to develop collaborations with
the school systems middle grades improvement efforts.
KEY QUESTIONS
Has your group encountered situations in which youve struggled to manage the
collaboration/confrontation dynamic? What did you do? What was the result?
Are there ways you can manage this dynamic more effectively or differently in
the future?
3
Zakiyah Ansari, Parent Leader
Zakiyah lives in Brooklyns East Flatbush
neighborhood, and her eight children allattend or attended the citys public schools.
She helped found both the Brooklyn
Education Collaborative and CEJ and
currently works as an organizer for CEJ
and the Alliance for Quality Education.
These are our kids. You cant keep telling us
you cant do things. Were not going to take
it anymore. We know that it can be done.
We know its done in other schools. Why
isnt it done in our communities?
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Parent Power Viewers Guide 7
Build local and citywide coalitions
A bunch of parents limited to one school district was not enough
if we were going to truly have a lasting impact on reforming and
transforming public education in the city of New York, we were going
to have to get more like-minded people onboard with us.
Carol Boyd, Parent Leader
Local, districtwide, and eventually citywide coalitions built by neighborhood groups often prove
necessary to build the scale of parent power required to leverage significant reform. New York
City school systems scale and complexity, with more than a million students in 1,600 schools,
presents an enormous challenge to local education organizing. The PAC quickly discovered
that the New York City schools chancellorthe systems superintendenthad the power to
remove ineffective principals and could intervene to improve failing districts. But the PAC also
discovered that a parent organizing group focused on one neighborhood elementary school could
not mobilize sufficient power to influence the actions of district- or systemwide administrators.
Because the PAC was unable to develop sufficient power to win its demands for local school
improvement, the group decided to develop a larger effort to advance its demands and helped
to form CC9the Community Collaborative to Improve District 9 Schools. Similarly, when
CC9s efforts failed to maintain community participation in the expansion of the Lead Teacher
Program, the coalition decided to form a citywide organization, the New York City Coalition for
Educational Justice, or CEJ, to leverage the organizing power of groups across four of the citys
five boroughs.
KEY QUESTIONS
Do your education organizing groups have sufficient power to change citywide
education policies or influence citywide administrators to make the improvements
your neighborhood schools need?
If not, could similar organizing groups across your city collaborate to develop more
powerful coalitions?
Jack Doyle, Executive Director,
New Settlement Apartments
Jack has headed NSA for the past fifteen
years and was also the board chair of the
New York City Coalition for the Homeless.
Currently, under his guidance, NSA is
developing a K12 public school in the
Mt. Eden section of the Bronx.
The organizations each brought to CC9
roots in the community, resources
be they financial resources, staff resources,
physical space for meetingsand relation-
ships, relationships with people, whether
they were neighborhood residents or
representatives who were in elected office.
Each of the organizations began to identifyleaders and members and build a base.
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Parent Power Viewers Guide 9
Develop relationships with the teachers union
In New York City, theres a history of distrust and separation between
parents and teachers. We had to figure out a way to try to soften
the relationship between parents and teachers, but also not give up
our power, parents power.
Ocynthia Williams, Parent Leader
In most U.S. cities, a local affiliate of the National Education Association or the American
Federation of Teachers represents the school systems teachers. Although urban parents and
teachers presumably share an overarching commitment to the successful education of the citys
children, collaborative efforts between parents and teachers to improve urban education have
been exceedingly difficult to achieve.
Before CC9s organizing efforts began, community collaborations with the United Federation of
Teachers (UFT), the citys teachers union, to improve public schooling were quite rare. But CC9
was determined to build a relationship with the UFT precisely because of the unions political
power. The CC9 parent leaders believed that if they could partner with the union in mutually
beneficial school reform projects, the power of such a community-union alliance would maximize
the potential for the reforms success. So CC9 initiated a series of discussions with the UFTs
leadership and local district staff to explore a possible union commitment to supporting CC9s
reform efforts.
The unions leadership, meanwhile, had become convinced that the UFT needed to develop
strategic, trust-based relationships with community groups, not only to end the polarization
generated by previous conflicts (see sidebar), but also to counter the increasing portrayals
of teachers unions as resistant to educational reform. Because a new and powerful national
wave of education reformers, as well as charter advocates and privatization proponents,
were increasingly portraying teachers unions as defendants of traditional practices in poorly
performing urban districts, it was important for the New York City teachers union, the nations
largest, to collaborate with community groups in significant reform efforts.
KEY QUESTIONS
In what ways have you worked with your local teachers union?
How open do they seem to collaborating with you on school improvement or district
reform projects?
What common educational ground do you share?
6
Union-Community Tensions
in New York City
In New York City, the enduring hostility
from the late 1960s Ocean Hill/Brownsville
conflict, which pitted neighborhood-based,
predominantly black and Latino advocates
of community control of schooling against
the predominantly white teachers union,
divided parents and teachers for many
years. Moreover, race and class differences
separating parents and teachers were
often intensified by charges from parents
in poor neighborhoods that too manyteachers harbored the soft bigotry of
low expectations for their children. Many
teachers, in turn, felt unfairly attacked
and denigrated when parents challenged
schooling quality and teaching practice.
Finally, the United Federation of Teachers
(UFT), the citys teachers union, was a
political powerhouse at both city and state
levels since its founding in the early 1960s.
Community groups contemplating joint action
with the UFT often doubted whether the
teachers union would value a community
alliance enough to treat a local group withparity and respect.
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1995
Parents in an after-school program
run by the New Settlement
Apartments (NSA), a neighborhood
housing organization, form the
Parent Action Committee (PAC)
to improve PS 64, the local
elementary school.
1998
The principal of PS 64 is removed
after a PAC organizing campaign
puts the spotlight on the schools
persistent educational failure and
the principal fights publicly with
one of his teachers. The PAC works
with the new principal to improve
the school, but the school makes
little progress.
2000
After failing to convince the district
superintendent and the chancellor
to improve District 9s schools, the
PAC helps to form the Community
Collaborative to Improve District 9
Schools, or CC9.
20022003
CC9, working with local teachers
and administrators, the teachers
union, and systemwide school
officials, develops the Lead Teacher
Program to reduce new teacher
attrition and improve the quality of
teaching in ten District 9 schools.
Enlist intermediary support
The staff at Annenberg really understood their role as being primarily
oriented to support the leadership of the parents that were coming
together. And it did that by providing really good research.
Ana Maria Archila, Co-Director, Make the Road
Given the critical role of research and data provision in education organizing, an institution that
can provide such research while valuing and respecting community organizations and parent
leadership can be quite helpful. Education organizing groups that lack the capacity to access
and analyze research and data should consider exploring relationships with university-based
research centers or nonprofit research groups that might provide the necessary data or the other
supports that CO&E provided to the parent organizing groups and coalitions in Parent Power
(see sidebar for more on these supports).
The relationship between the PAC and the intermediary that began as IESP and became a unit
of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform started when Jack Doyle, the executive director
of NSA, contacted IESP to arrange a series of workshops about parents rights for the parent
members of an NSA after-school program. After the workshop series concluded, the parents
formed the PAC, and IESP staffers agreed to support the PACs development with additional
workshops on education issues, as well as with research, data, and other tools for the PACs
organizing. Thus a fifteen-year relationship was initiated, in which IESP, and then CO&E, staffers
have supported parent training, research and data provision, strategy development, retreat
facilitation, organizer training, and fundraising.
KEY QUESTIONS
What supports, such as research, data, strategy, and fundraising, does your
organization need?
Can you identify local university or nonprofit education research groups that might
provide those supports?
Parent PowerTimeline
How Can Intermediary Organizations
Support Parent Organizers?
Intermediary organizations can help support
education organizing groups in ways that
go far beyond research and data provision.
Both IESP and AISR, for example, provided
trainings on a wide range of education
issues to organizers and leaders of individual
groups and coalitions. Both intermediaries
also offered strategic support for group
campaigns, helped with media contacts to
ensure local and citywide publicity, linked
individual groups and coalitions to electedleaders and education reform experts, and
helped groups raise the funding necessary
to support and sustain their organizing.
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local education advocacy or school reform nonprofit groups may be able to provide some of the
required resources. It is critical, of course, that all potential intermediary organizations have the
experience and the capacity to work effectively with parent and neighborhood activists.
How is the coalitions funding raised and allocated?
By 2010, CEJs budget, including funding for the member organizations, CO&E staff, and
organizing expenses, totaled a little more than $1 million annually, primarily raised from localand national foundations. The CO&E staff do most of CEJs fundraising by soliciting foundation
support and developing and drafting funding proposals. One of the member CBOs acts as the
coalitions fiscal agent. The coalition allocates funds to member groups according to each
groups organizing capacity. CEJs three tiers of funding, for example, provide grants to member
groups based on their differential capacity for turn-out, political influence, and parent leadership
roles. Groups with consistently large membership turn-out that also effectively leverage the
power of elected officials receive higher allocations than groups with more limited mobilizing
and political capacity. Coalition-wide accountability committees approve allocations to
member groups and assess the performance of each member group in terms of continuation
of their allocations.
What are some ways to build a successful collaboration with the teachers union?There are many ways to initiate a collaboration with the teachers union, but success depends on
starting from shared interests. CC9 and the UFT, for example, shared an interest in improving the
quality of city teaching. CC9 built on that shared interest through intensive negotiations with the
unions leadership, and by developing a trust-based relationship between the CC9 coordinator
and the unions district leader. To expand that relationship to CC9 parent leaders and organizers
and the unions school-based leaders, intensive discussions focused on shared issues such as how
to respond to threatened budget cuts and how to improve traffic safety around schools. Through
extended conversations at school-based meetings, shared dinners, and other events linking
parent leaders and union representatives, more complex issues, such as how to improve teaching
quality, were explored. The idea for the Lead Teacher Program developed from those discussions.
What sustains the films parent leaders across many years of organizing?
The films parent leaders say that the intensity of their commitment to improving the citys
schools, not only for their own children but for all the citys students, keeps them active. The
bonds theyve built with other members of the groups and coalitions also provide key supports.
The leaders indicate that the arc of their own development is crucial; they note how their
strategic capacities and leadership skills have grown, and how they continue to perceive new
challenges as their organizations expand and change. Finally, they see the results of their work
in the development of new educational opportunities for their children.
2008
The school system initiates its
Campaign for Middle School
Success, incorporating CEJs
improvement initiatives and
appointing CEJ members to the
Campaigns advisory committee.
2009
CEJ launches its College Prep,
Not Just Test Prep campaign
to improve the citys schools so
that every student graduates
high school prepared to succeed
in college.
2010
CEJs third annual Martin Luther
King Day rally at the Abyssinian
Baptist Church introduces a K12
reform platform designed to ensure
that the city school system prepares
all its students for success in
college and/or careers.
Ocynthia Williams, Parent Leader
Ocynthia was a leading member of the
Highbridge Community Life Center, and her
six children all attend or attended the citys
public schools. She helped to found both
CC9 and CEJ and is currently an organizer
for the Abyssinian Development Corporation
in Harlem.
They took the whole community involvement
piece out of the expansion of the Lead
Teacher Program, which the evaluators felt
was a huge part of why it was successful.
It was us who brought all of them to the
table, to help develop the program. The
program was a success. Why in the world
would the Department of Education and themayors office expand the program without
including our input?
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Parent Power Viewers Guide 4
About AISRs Center for Education Organizing
The Center for Education Organizing supports local and national demands for educational justice
in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. The Center integrates the expertise
of a university-based research center, years of on-the-ground experience supporting education
organizing, and a longstanding reputation as a convener of education stakeholders.
Center staff provide research, policy analysis, and training to help individual groups and national
networks do education reform. The Center also facilitates alliance-building among education
organizing groups and with other stakeholders such as civil rights and advocacy organizations,
teachers unions, academics, and education researchers. Because parents, teachers, and students
have such critical stakes in improving urban public education, building effective collaborations
between community groups and teachers unions, and between youth organizers and other
stakeholders, are cornerstones of our work. Our support is always tailored to local needs.
The supports we can provide include:
Training
Developing workshops, presentations, or webinars for adult and youth leaders and/or organizers
on education policy issues and specific education organizing contexts.
Research and Policy Analysis
Monitoring and analyzing federal education policy, as well as key issues in states and districts,
to inform local work and to identify key directions in national education debates.
Quickly distilling research or education data to inform adult and youth organizing campaigns.
Alliance-Building
Encouraging and facilitating collaboration between community groups and teachers unions and
between youth organizers and other stakeholders.
Connecting groups working on similar issues and hosting virtual and face-to-face meetings for
leaders to learn with and from each other.
Helping to connect communities with research and policy experts, civil rights organizations,
reform support organizations, and others who can assist them with their organizing work.
Building the Field
Disseminating knowledge of successful organizing strategies.
Initiating and supporting national conversations on strategies and next steps in building a
stronger movement for educational justice.
CONTACT
The Center for Education Organizing welcomes a discussion with you about your organizations
needs and how our range of capabilities can help you achieve your school reform objectives.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (212) 328-9280
Web: www.annenberginstitute.org
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Pedro Noguera, New York UniversityResearch demonstrates that schools improve when parents and
communities are engaged and apply constructive pressure for change.
Parent Power shows how New York City parents generated significant
schooling change across 15 years of organizing efforts. At a time when
so many policy-makers focus narrowly on technical solutions to the
challenges facing urban schools, Parent Powershows that a more inclusive
and dynamic approach can bring improvement.
Charles M. Payne, University of Chicago
Parent Power is about parent ingenuity, persistence, and capacity to
outlast a bureaucracy that tried to quash parents organizing energy. New
York Citys school reform is frequently touted as the result of top-downmandates, but Parent Powershows how thousands of parents mobilized
to generate important policy and practice changes. These parents set out
to make schools better not only for their children, but for all the citys
children, and they succeeded.
Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
Children are the real winners when their parents and teachers work
together to improve their schools.Parent Poweris a terrific story of courage,
persistence, and collaboration among parents, community groups, and the
teachers union that produced significant school reform for thousands of
New York Citys children.