Struggling for Educational Equity in Diverse Communities: School Reform as Social Movement

This paper argues that those seeking equity-focused educational reform have much to learn from social movements and grassroots political organizing. We explore how the knowledge, skills, strategies, and passionate narratives emanating from such noninstitutional change efforts can shed light on the difficulty of equity-focused education reform and provide equity reformers with an expanded repertoire of change strategies. We pursue our analysis using an “exemplary” case of reform at Wilson High School. The case data were collected as part of a four-year study documenting the college preparation experience of students of color in diverse, comprehensive high schools. We conclude that the logic and strategies employed in social and political movements – in contrast to those found in organizational change models – are more likely to expose, challenge, and if successful, disrupt the prevailing norms and politics of schooling inequality that frustrate equity-focused reforms. Without attention to these dynamics, such reforms are abandoned entirely or implemented in ways that actually replicate (perhaps in a different guise) the stratified status quo. We also conclude that those of us whose research focuses on equity reforms would be well advised to use social and political movements as lenses to more clearly view the course of these much advocated, but seldom achieved efforts.