The "C" in the "A, B, C's" of school reform = community organizing and civic engagement

The missing C in DC's school "reform" efforts (note that while "reform" in the context of government is supposed to mean "improvement" often it merely means "change" and of course, all changes are not necessarily positive) is community engagement and civic involvement.

Besides the fact that there really is no plan for improvement, just a bunch of things happening, ranging from closing schools to offering teacher buyouts and slight reductions in the number of administrative personnel.

Education Week reports on a study of the link between community organizing and the improvement of urban education systems, in "Community Organizing Portrayed as Plus for City Schools."

I think it's fair to say that the current administration isn't committed to civic engagement, to involving citizens-residents in local government in substantive ways. This is definitely true with regard to efforts to improve the schools, where there are few meetings, or many meetings but all on the same day, and a constant flurry of system changes that will bring about great dislocation, but no current planning to address this, i.e., are there any school closing and merger integration teams in place to organize and implement the merger-closing of 23 schools?

From the article:

Grassroots organizing efforts to reform schools in seven urban districts are contributing to myriad improvements that include more-robust parental involvement, more-equitable distribution of funding to underserved schools, and better student-attendance rates and academic achievement, according to researchers from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. ...

"Leaders in these districts and cities were clear about why they listened to these groups, and often it’s because they provided connections to communities that they hadn’t reached on their own,” she said.

Released March 26 as a 31-page preview of a full report that will come out this summer, “Organized Communities, Stronger Schools” was produced by the Community Involvement Program, which provides training, organizing strategy, and policy research to help community groups working to improve urban schools. The Community Involvement Program, which was initiated in 1996 at New York University, joined the Annenberg Institute, based at Brown University, in 2006. ...

Note that this finding is the same as one of the findings of the multi-city study of urban educational reform funded by the Natonal Science Foundation. One of the major conclusions of this study, led by local professors Jeffrey Henig of GWU and Clarence Stone of UMD, was that civic engagement and community involvement is key to the success of urban educational reform efforts, and that failure is much more likely without it. The project has generated a great number of publications, including an edited collection of chapters on civic engagement and political change, Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the the Challenge of Political Change.

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Also see "All together now" from the Guardian, about a music-singing program to engage children, that also includes parents choirs as well.