Purpose: Over the last five years, approximately 50% of the students in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island and 20% across New York State have opted out of the yearly standardized tests for third through eighth grade. This article focuses on two grassroots organizations, New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) and Long Island…

Little research has focused on the extent to which community school principals approach family engagement efforts, specifically from an equity-centered perspective. This study examined how community school principals' leadership practices exhibited tenets of Community Equity Literacy. Results from interviews with 13 administrators and 19…

In this dissertation, I analyze the development and dissemination of state-level policies to prohibit colleges from considering criminal history for purposes of admissions otherwise known as ban the box in higher education. This research engages with practical and instructive questions of how individuals or coalitions can learn from other policy…

Background and Context: Grassroots activism is on the rise in American education, leading some scholars to announce the arrival of a "New Politics of Education" in which political elites and grassroots actors clash over foundational questions of policy and power. However, little research has examined just how consequential grassroots…

This conceptual article explores education and the relational in everyday social movement. I highlight a single, local community event--a Speak Out--and travel with scholarship on public pedagogy, witnessing, and Latina feminist theories of coalition to articulate pedagogies of 'being with' in community activism for racial justice. My interpretive…

During the 2016 presidential campaign, immigration became a major national issue. President Trump's executive order that places travel restrictions on citizens and refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries and that bans their entrance into the United States has resulted in nationwide protests and questions regarding the constitutionality of…

As the co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a network founded by Saul Alinsky in 1940 that partners with faith and community-based organizations to improve local leadership and citizen-led action, the author has witnessed how power organizing can work. In the first few months of 2013, the author had been privileged to be part of a…

Although critiqued for circular reasoning and lack of definitional and analytic clarity, social capital has garnered widespread interest in two areas relevant to environmental education (EE): the impact of family and community-level social capital on positive youth development and of community-level social capital in fostering collective action to…

This article describes a research study that aims to better understand the life-worlds of undocumented migrant youth in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. The program design combines critical place inquiry with Youth Participatory Action Research (yPAR) and photovoice to understand how experiences of setting and place shape how youth who…

This article discusses the notion of action and personal agency. The author discusses his experiences constructing an arts installation that supported a grassroots effort to revitalize Hunts Point, a community in the South Bronx that is home to 11,000 families, eighteen waste transfer stations, 40% of New York City's sewage, all of the Bronx's…

The small school movement originated in the democratic ideology of Deborah Meier, who sought to create schools that gave students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders in the communities they served a voice in education. In New York City, Meier's vision was implemented haphazardly by a group of business and political elites able to pour…

In this article sixth grade English/language arts and science teacher at Oldfield Middle School (Greenlawn, New York) Monica Zenyuh describes how she established a program called "Adopt-a-School" in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Schools that wished to provide assistance would be matched with a grade, school, or district in devastated…

Through a hermeneutic phenomenological study of interview data from 8 community artists, the author sought to discover commonalities and differences in the worldviews and philosophies of self that underlie community mural making as they relate to art therapy as social action and art therapy practice within a traditional Western cultural framework.…

What explains the rise of race-conscious affirmative action policies in undergraduate admissions? The dominant theory posits that adoption of such policies was precipitated by urban and campus unrest in the North during the late 1960s. Based on primary research in a sample of 17 selective schools, we find limited support for the dominant theory.…

Within the field of teacher education, increased emphasis has been placed on social justice education (SJE). This qualitative study examined a group of beginning teachers who voluntarily participated in a social justice critical inquiry project (CIP). The findings indicate that while many of them were successful at teaching social issues, they…