A Copernican Revolution Needed for Democratic School Reform
In the last installment of our Education Week blog conversation on democracy and schools, Deborah Meier gave a remarkable account of school change efforts in the last two decades, "Democratic Experiments." She is worth quoting at length:
"In the early 1990s...some 100 plus K-12 schools in NYC proposed a large-scale experiment, serving about 50,000 students and representative of the city as a whole. Our aim: to demonstrate the value of greater school/community-based autonomy including show-casing alternative systems of accountability. Annenberg offered us 50 million dollars to try it out. The mayor, NYC chancellor, NYC board of education, the state superintendent of schools, and the American Federation of Teachers local chapter signed on. Two local universities agreed to study our work over five years both statistically and ethnographically. If we hadn't been stopped by a new chancellor and a new state superintendent we'd have learned a lot."
Meier also describes smaller but still significant efforts like "Boston's Pilot" schools and the "Consortium" of schools in New York City, both of which have used alternative assessments, have generally proven successful, and have been largely ignored by policy makers.
The question is how to respond.
It seems to me that the fact the chancellor and state superintendent could end of the "large scale experiment" in the early 1990s despite the broad coalition involved in planning it, shows why we need to rethink politics on a large scale.
Politics has become narrowly professionalized, detached from "civic roots" in the life of local communities. It now almost entirely revolves around politicians (and other public figures), their antics, promises, and positions. Like many other experts, they are detached, especially at state and national levels and in federal agencies. Citizens are reduced to consumer choices. This makes for dysfunctional politics and powerless and irresponsible citizens.
I had a different experience as a young man in the civil rights movement. Black beauty parlors and barber shops were places where people learned "everyday politics." As Sara Evans and I describe in our book, Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America, I saw how this learning could be deepened. Highlander Folk School worked with beauticians across the south to teach organizing skills.
One story with parallels from our years at the Humphrey Institute is about the late A Copernican Revolution Needed for Democratic School Reform | Harry Boyte:
