Introduction: Linking theory, practice, and community in urban school reform

THIS BOOK PROFILES LOCAL AND NATIONAL efforts to transform urban education and reinvent urban teacher preparation through the development of democratic school-community relationships and community-based curricula. It is premised on our belief that authentic urban school reform requires educators to work collaboratively with parents, neighborhood activists, policy makers, and community development specialists to alter the power relationships between urban schools and the communities they serve, and to create relevant, student-centered curricula and teaching methods. The current crisis in urban schooling is well recognized. Prevailing responses to this crisis have been to hold urban schools accountable by raising standards and instituting high-stakes assessments for students and teachers alike. These top-down reform proposals too often have centralized policy and curriculum decisions and resulted in an increased emphasis on "teaching to the test," a strategy that has not adequately addressed the academic needs of urban children and youth.We believe these reforms cannot bridge the longstanding cultural divide between the educational establishment and urban families and produce the schools that are needed to give all urban students a high quality education. The chapters in this volume offer alternative responses to the crisis in urban education by making urban schools accountable to the communities they serve through policy initiatives that promote educational equity, community-based curricula, and teacher education and parent empowerment programs that emphasize democratic collaboration between universities, urban teachers, parents, and community members. The genesis of this volume originated in a series of programs organized by Mary Finn, Director of the Urban Education Institute at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, during Urban Education Month in March 2001. This month-long focus was designed to engage urban teachers, parents, university faculty, and graduate students in the discussion of innovative approaches that link theory, practice, and community involvement in urban school reform, with the goal of offering, as Jeannie Oakes says in this volume, "some images and ideas that may embolden people . . . to act on their best dreams for American schooling" [emphasis ours]. Several of the chapters were talks by urban education scholars and practitioners from throughout the country presented during Urban Education Month. Other chapters in this book highlight efforts by faculty and graduate students at the University at Buffalo to link the university more closely with work in city schools and urban neighborhoods. Buffalo, New York, is often described as a postindustrial "rust-belt" city. The current population of just under 300, 000 (down from a high of almost 600,000 in the late 1960s) represents a steady decline in the industrial base and a population shift to the first-ring and second-ring suburbs, with a resulting loss of property tax revenues to support public schools. There has also been a historic disconnect between the university community and the city schools. The Graduate School of Education is located on the North campus of the University at Buffalo that was built in the suburbs during the early 1970s, much to the dismay of many of the city's residents, who continue to believe that a downtown campus might have helped to anchor Buffalo's struggling neighborhoods. In the fall of 1998, the new dean advocated a focus on urban education as a central mission of the Graduate School of Education and established an Urban Education committee co-chaired by Patrick Finn and Lauri Johnson to develop a strategic plan. The Buffalo-based projects profiled in this book represent some of the recent efforts to use university resources to serve city neighborhoods and act as a catalyst for urban school reform. Through the voices of teacher educators, community activists, urban teachers, parents, and students, we aim to illustrate how the theory and practice of community engagement might be enacted in urban teaching and preparation programs. Too often, when teacher preparation programs link research and theory-based practice, the theory studied is devoid of the social, cultural, political, and physical contexts of urban schools.The authors of chapters in this volume focus on socially and culturally based theory, theory about equity and justice and the power relations that call for action to address the educational needs of urban students. The notion of linking sociocultural and politically grounded theory to teacher education was first developed in the 1930s at Teachers College, Columbia University, where a program was established to provide educational practitioners with a broad, integrated, and progressive approach to teaching and learning, drawing on the traditionally separate fields of educational sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology and social psychology (Tozer,Anderson,& Armbruster, 1990). By the 1960s, teacher education students at many universities were encouraged to focus their professional development in the areas of subject-based curriculum and methods of instruction, where the theories that underlie the practice are more likely to be psychological than sociological, and more inclined to encourage support for the status quo than to challenge or change it. In addition, the emergence of urban education as a field of study in the 1960s and early 1970s often took a deficit approach to urban students and their families rather than examining the structural inequities that created poor urban neighborhoods. The legacy of teacher preparation programs that are largely discipline-centered and aim to "fix" poor and working class students and their families remain with us today. In short, traditional approaches to linking theory and practice in teacher education have not resulted in widespread equity and social justice action on the part of educators.We believe such action may be exactly what is required to create urban schools that excite and inspire. While the chapters in this volume offer diverse approaches to urban school reform, there is a single theme that resonates throughout the volume, and that is the necessity of honest, democratic collaboration with the immediate community in which the urban schools are situated.We believe it is perhaps the single most important imperative that the dominant, top-down trend in urban education reform has sadly neglected. Patrick J. Finn, in Literacy with an Attitude: EducatingWorking- Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest (1999), argues that if we are to make significant progress in urban education, those most affected by the current conditions, the urban working class themselves, must take an active role. According to Finn, many parents sense their children are getting a lesser education, and while that angers them, they often feel isolated and dependent on the authority of the professional educators to do the right thing. To expect that the education establishment can implement the necessary reforms solely on their own initiative, however, is unrealistic. In order to reform urban education, Finn urges us to study the work of Saul Alinsky, who used the labor organizer model to create a new public activist role, the "community organizer." Public engagement is the term most often used to describe the efforts of a community organizer. In his summary of the 1998 report by The Annenberg Institute on Public Engagement for Public Education, Finn provides a description of public engagement and its promise: There is a quiet revolution taking place in public education. It is the beginning of a fundamental shift in the kind of behavior Americans engage in on behalf of their children. It signals a change in the structures of power in education. It is referred to as public conversation, parent involvement, school/community partnerships, citizens' action, neighborhood improvement, community organizing, and even standards setting. It has the following characteristics: it focuses on improving teaching and learning; it brings to the table those who are typically excluded; and it facilitates training and dissemination of information that prepares communities to make tough decisions. (p. 196) The chapters in this volume reflect the wide variety of ways public engagement might link teachers, parents, and community to the reform process and contribute to improving urban schools.They are organized around the following themes: Call to Action: Promoting Educational Equity; Linking Urban Schools to Their Communities; Reforming Teacher Education to Reform Urban Education; and University Partnerships for Parent Empowerment.