Transforming Public Education: The Need for an Educational Justice Movement

Posted by New England Journal of Public Policy on January 26, 2015

Education: the epicenter of injustice in our society

Low-income children of color are at the epicenter of injustice in our society, writes Mark Warren in The New England Journal of Public Policy. It will take a social movement to break this cycle, but education reformers seldom think in movement terms. Most reformers take a technical or an organizational approach, concentrating on how education is delivered, e.g., improving curricula or better training teachers. But the failures of public education are less organizational than a reflection of the lack of power held by low-income communities of color in terms of resources, accountability, and performance. Those with power seldom recognize or admit these failures are systems of oppression, rationalizing them as a result of natural forces, even as they work to alleviate them. Movements transform unequal power arrangements in part by demanding recognition, voice, and participation. A social movement can galvanize broad public consensus for far-reaching efforts to transform public education itself and to connect this transformational work to a larger movement to combat poverty and racism. As it stands, we are asking teachers to solve our biggest societal problems virtually on their own.

http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1662&context=nejpp