Publications

Books and Journal Articles by Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN) Members and Leaders.

A City-Campus Engagement Theory From, and For, Practice

This article tells a story of practice, a story of theory, and how each informs and transforms the other through a two-way flow of people and knowledge from a city to a campus and back again. By reflecting with fellow participants on the events and outcomes of a sustained city-campus partnership, the author introduces a theory of engagement from and for practice, and strategies such as investing in human relationships and using instruments-for-action. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

MIT@Lawrence Partnership

MIT@Lawrence is a sustained, multi-faceted partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the City of Lawrence, MA, a small, ethnically diverse city 30 miles northwest of Boston. Over the partnership’s 10-year history, faculty and students from many MIT programs have worked together with Lawrence residents, civic institutions and community-based organizations to address problems facing the city. Projects have addressed abandoned and foreclosed property management, neighborhood revitalization, and “cleaning and transforming” polluted canals and alleyways. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

One Activist Intellectual’s Experience in Surviving and Transforming the Academy

My survival in higher education has its roots in the connections between my lived experience as the immigrant son of farm worker parents and the lessons learned in overcoming systemic obstacles as a community organizer and intellectual activist. Whenever the road in academia got rough I had to face another hurdle, I always remembered the difficulties that my immigrant farm worker family had to face. In this way, the problems I encountered in academia appeared smaller and more manageable. My struggles with learning English and growing up in a poor immigrant farm worker family became the foundations of language, labor, and immigration issues that I passionately took up in my organizing, teaching, and research as an activist intellectual in academia. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

Forces of Accountability? The Power of Poor Parents in No Child Left Behind

Parental involvement is mentioned more than one hundred times in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this article, John Rogers argues that President Bush and former U.S. secretary of education Rod Paige have promoted policy narratives of test accountability, choice, and parental involvement that describe how poor parents can spur educators to have higher expectations and to work harder. What is missing from these policy narratives, Rogers argues, is a fundamental understanding of the problems facing poor communities: a lack of both resources and tools for collective action. Through the case study of a grassroots nonprofit organization, Parent-U-Turn, Rogers demonstrates how parents can create what he calls public power by responding to structural and systemic educational problems through shared inquiry and collective action. Rogers holds up this case as an example of how parents might become true forces for accountability in public education and outlines ways in which the lessons of this example might be incorporated into the reauthorization of NCLB. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

Finding Common Ground in Education Values: Influential Californians Speak on the Purpose of Public Education

This UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA) study reveals important common ground among influential Californians about the knowledge and skills students should acquire from the state’s public schools. The points of agreement between stakeholders who span the political and ideological spectrum differ from the lofty rhetoric that characterizes much of today’s education debate, and offer hope for improving California’s public schools. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

Studying the Struggle: Contexts for Learning and Identity Development for Urban Youth

Activism and organizing can be a fertile subject matter for young people to study. This article presents a case study of a summer seminar in which urban high school students examined the historical struggle for educational justice in their communities. Adopting a “communities of practice” approach to learning, the article documents the changing participation of seminar participants and the changing identities and skills that this entailed. During the seminar, students took on identities as “critical researchers”— skilled investigators who produce and share knowledge relevant to social change. In the process, seminar participants developed and deployed high-level academic skills in language arts, social studies, and mathematics. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

Becoming Critical Public Historians: Students Study Diversity and Access in Post “Brown v. Board” Los Angeles

Anniversaries of major historical events, such as the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, provide social studies teachers with the opportunity to connect their classroom study to broader public conversations about the event and its significance. This article reports on the one such effort – an intensive five week summer seminar in which urban high school students produced original historical research on the legacy of Brown in greater Los Angeles. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

“More Justice”: The Role of Organized Labor in Educational Reform

This article explores the potential role of low-wage service sector unions in engaging in equity-minded school reform. The members of many such unions are parents of children attending poorly resourced public schools. In seeking to address the interests of their members, labor unions can draw upon resources, organizing strategies, and political relationships to contribute to grassroots campaigns for educational equity. Data gathered in Los Angeles from labor and civic leaders, as well as janitors belonging to the Service Employees International Union Local 1877, reveal possibilities for low-wage service sector unions to build alliances around educational reform issues and support their members’ individual capacities to advocate for their own children in schools. At the same time, low-wage service sector unions face challenges to participating in school reform efforts, including prioritizing education issues among other competing interests and identifying common ground with teachers’ unions. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago

How Students Are Leading Us: Youth Organizing and the Fight for Public Education in Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s students have long been a major force in the battle for public education, and for the past decade and a half they have fought valiantly against the encroachment of neoliberalism, the idea that market-based logic can solve non-market problems more efficiently and effectively than governmental or public sector agencies. Leading this charge have been two prominent youth organizing groups, the Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) and Youth United for Change (YUC). Both PSU and YUC have been at the forefront of recent organizing efforts to protest and propose alternatives to the shuttering of 23 schools, the firing of 3,859 educators and support staff, and the elimination of extracurricular programs and arts education from the public schools for the 2012-2013 school year. (more…)

By anaantunes, ago