Activist School Reform
The Center for School Change, located at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute in Minneapolis, recently completed an intensive internal-review process marking its first five years--and pointing to the next five. The center's primary mission is to "help teams of educators, parents, and students transform existing public schools or create new ones, including charter public schools." Though this work centers on Minnesota schools, the CSC's impact--in terms of school-reform research and policy formation--reaches well beyond that state's borders. With new funding from the Annenberg and Blandin foundations, and expansion to a second Center for School Change created by the Graustein Memorial Fund in Connecticut, the ideas of this forum for promoting choice in public education are advancing. Below is an adapted excerpt from the CSC report "Looking Back, Moving Forward," which is available from the center at (612) 626-1834.
The Center for School Change is part of a long, rich tradition in American life that blends the activist impulse with the rigors of research and participatory democracy. We have tried to combine the social-change strategies of reformers such as Susan B. Anthony, Saul Alinsky, and Martin Luther King Jr. with promising and proven school-reform ideas. Over the past five years, we've spent $3 million and worked with about 40 communities. We're convinced that the deepest, widest impact comes from working simultaneously at the school, community, and policy levels. Our experience may be useful to others. Here are seven major lessons we've learned:
(1) Schools can increase students' achievement, improve their attendance and their attitudes, even when the students come from troubled backgrounds. Some argue that schools can't do much to overcome problems of youngsters from troubled families. We disagree. It is critical to strengthen families and to develop a more just economy. But schools can do a great deal to help every youngster. Here...
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