(Un)doing Spatially Fixed Inequality: Critical Reflections on Urban School District-Community Partnerships
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(Un)doing Spatially Fixed Inequality: Critical Reflections on Urban School District‑Community Partnerships Melinda Lemke1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Utilizing critical geography, critical history, and critical educational studies as guideposts, this article examines community organizing and school district partnerships as relevant to improving urban public education reform efforts and schooling practices within the United States. Proceeding in four parts, part one discusses the kinds of external multi-sector entities working with school districts in a continued era of accountability-driven educational reform. Understanding community activism as a lever to address urban geospatial obstacles to equity-oriented educational practices, this is followed by a historical overview of community-based organizations (CBOs) as tied to sociopolitical, economic, and schooling transformation throughout the U.S. Part three helps to illustrate this position through discussion of the BuffaloNiagara Region and the case of one urban school district context—Buffalo Public Schools (BPS). Specifically, it considers how regional history, demographic shifts, urban development, racial spatialization, and CBOs affect district practices. It concludes with a discussion of the significance of CBO partnerships with urban schools toward the end of improving educational opportunities for traditionally underserved, low income, and minoritized student populations. Keywords Critical geography · Critical history · Critical educational studies · Educational reform · Urban education · Neoliberalism · Racial spatialization · School district partnerships · Community organizing · Community-based organizations (CBOs)
* Melinda Lemke [email protected] 1
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, University at Buffalo, SUNY, 470 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260‑1000, USA
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Vol.:(0123456789)
The Urban Review
Introduction To be sustainable, educational reform must be rooted in a foundation that permits uninterrupted interaction and development of reciprocity among a grassroots base and community elites (Stone 2001). Moreover, to be successful, educational reform must have civic capacity, or “the extent to which different sectors of the community—business, parents, educators, state and local officeholders, nonprofits, and others—act in concert around a matter of community-wide import” (p. 596). Over the past 15 years, organizational partnerships with public school systems increasingly have worked in ways that intervene, mediate, and assist educational policy development, reform, and other schooling processes. Although a focus on these entities is newer to educational policy and leadership research, there is a history of their steady involvement in educational settings. Research literature points to a host of labels for cross- (Bryson et al. 2006) and multi-sector entities (i.e. public and private) that work with entire districts and individual schools to share information and resources from two or more sectors to reach an outcome t
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