The case for democratic reforms in urban school districts

I met up with my research assistants at a nearby middle school one day last fall. Architecturally, the Providence, Rhode Island, school building is regal and enchanting, with high ceilings held up by grand columns draped in bronze crown moldings. But conditions deteriorated as we walked from the lobby to the cafeteria. Step by step, the building began to resemble other urban school buildings that our Black, brown, and poor children are segregated into. Still, we weren’t there for a building appraisal. We came to talk about democracy as a policy reform.

We introduced students to what is essentially a participatory budgeting initiative. For background, participatory budgeting (Wampler, McNulty, & Touchton, 2021) is a process that started in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in the 1980s. Brazilians had lived more than two decades under a military dictatorship. As civilian leaders wrested control and put a democracy in place, the Brazilian Workers’ Party created a process for everyday citizens to have power over public spending. They believed this would strengthen their new and still fragile democracy. What started out as a small initiative in Porto Alegre grew into the participatory budgeting movement that we see now. Participatory budgeting initiatives stretch the across the globe, also reaching the U.S., albeit low in volume.

Participatory budgeting in the U.S.

Our team seeks to make the concept more widespread here, with a focus on urban public schools. We are not the first to introduce participatory budgeting to K-12 schools. Daniel Schugurensky of Arizona State University has been leading such initiatives in Phoenix high schools for years. The Participatory Budgeting Project has been forming partnerships and providing tools for schools in New York City and beyond. Chicago and Seattle also have joined the party.

Supported by a racial equity grant from the Spencer Foundation, our initiative, Community Decides, tweaks the original model, using large forums that divide entire student bodies into small groups for deliberations that feed into the final decision. Like the other initiatives, our project is expanding. Collectively, participatory budgeting is gaining steam in the urban school landscape. However, these strategic attempts at youth empowerment remain marginal tools.

That day in the cafeteria, we told the students their school would be receiving a sum of money, but they would decide how to spend it. At first, they were bewildered, uttering sounds of confusion under their breath. Yet, once the initial shock wore off, the core idea settled in students’ minds, and they quickly embraced the premise: Improving schools should begin with their ideas. As a Black professor, I was so proud to see those Black and brown students showing interest by asking pressing questions: Why does the food taste so bad? Why aren’t there more after-school programs? Who makes all these decisions in the first place?

Impact of democratic innovation strategies

For the past decade, I’ve dedicated my career to studying democratic innovation strategies for school improvement. I want to know what this means for urban schools packed with students of color. At the heart of this push for democracy is the notion that kids’ and parents’ voices matter. They matter not just in a “seek public input” kind of way, but as a deeper way to solve problems. Democracy shouldn’t be about preventing community uproar and backlash; it should be, as John Dewey calls it, “an intellectual project” (Dewey & Rogers, 1927/2012). We engage with democracy to improve society, and our engagement teaches us about society and ourselves.

At the heart of this push for democracy is the notion that kids’ and parents’ voices matter. They matter not just in a “seek public input” kind of way, but as a deeper way to solve problems.

Democracy as an instructional process is an ideal foundation for education policy reform, particularly for urban schools. The persistent gaps in achievement, access to quality instruction, and access to up-to-date facilities are well documented (Orfield & Lee, 2005). Black students, relative to their white peers, remain less likely to show proficiency through standardized tests, graduate high school, and attend college (Johnson, 2019). When taking nonacademic routes, Black adults earn less money and face a higher probability of being incarcerated (Riddle & Sinclair, 2019).

The route to addressing that inequality, though, rarely starts with the voices of Black and brown students, parents, and community members. Instead, across urban districts, the voices of government leaders and policy makers dominate, and their solutions tend to focus on school choice mechanisms: How do we give individual parents agency in the enrollment process? How do we use charters to spur enrollment competition? The answers to these questions rarely support low-income students en masse. Improvements centered on choice benefit only the lucky few. What should school improvement look like to benefit the many?

Improving together

Some school improvement conversations focus on curricular and instructional tools. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the conversation around models that blend brick-and-mortar classroom instruction with online tools. Districts have been embracing instructional tools that integrate technology into the classroom. They are seeking out reading, math, and science curricula based on cutting-edge research on child development. The push to make curricula more culturally relevant has helped teachers reframe academic goals around the lived experiences of students. This same belief in the power of student agency is what supports the notion of democracy as school reform. Let’s build on these existing teaching strategies by using democratic processes that allow students to dictate what schooling looks like.

Urban school reform that does not center the voices of students of color reinforces the idea that society does not trust their capacity to think logically.

What does democratic reform mean in practice? I believe every urban district should consider some form of participatory budgeting, but that just begins to scratch the surface. Districts could provide incentives for schools to hold deliberative forums (Rourke, 2014), where students engage in discussions on pressing school issues. Too often, kids are not involved in conversations on finding solutions for common problems like cyberbullying, fighting, and low attendance. If they are involved, discussions are usually restricted to students in leadership positions. But a democracy is only as strong as the voice of its most vulnerable citizen. Districts should be urging schools to hold voting referendums for students to decide things like curricular changes or after-school programming. A random selection of students could test out curricular options and make recommendations to the larger student body. Urban school democracy is a feasible practice.

The story of America

At the most fundamental level, democratic approaches to urban school reform are important not only for practical policy purposes but also for more symbolic reasons. Democracy is about trusting the public to collectively reason through decisions that affect the whole. We decide who the best candidates are to lead government and whether governments should levy taxes for public goods. Yet, the story of America has been the story of the continued distrust in certain people to make good decisions. Race, class, and gender too often are used as indicators of who is worthy to decide what our society looks like. Urban school reform that does not center the voices of students of color, therefore, reinforces the idea that society does not trust their capacity to think logically. It suggests that they do not know what is best for themselves.

We tell our kids that they’re brilliant. We tell them that they’re the future. Let’s treat them that way.

 

References

Dewey, J. & Rogers, M.L. (2012). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Penn State Press. (Original work published 1927)

Johnson, R. (2019, May 16). Why school integration works. Washington Post.

Orfield, G. & Lee, C. (2005). Why segregation matters: Poverty and educational inequality. The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Riddle, T. & Sinclair, S. (2019, April 2). Racial disparities in school-based disciplinary actions are associated with county-level rates of racial bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (17), 8255-8260.

Rourke, B. (2014). Developing materials for deliberative forums. Kettering Foundation.

Wampler, B., McNulty, S., & Touchton, M. (2021). Participatory budgeting in global perspective. Oxford University Press.

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This article appears in the October 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 62-63.