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Stand Up For Your Rights
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Summer Research Seminar 2002
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 Forty-eight years ago, the United States Supreme Court declared in Brown that education is a "right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Today, many students in California do not have access to even the basic tools of learning. Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity can only be realized when students, parents, and teachers press for quality schooling for all. Such pressure requires that members of the public become informed about their rights and the educational conditions of their schools. It demands new civic structures that enable students, parents, and teachers to access, analyze, and share information about their schools. And it calls for a system of educational governance that takes account of public concerns and is accountable for safeguarding students’ rights.
This summer, IDEA brought together a group of urban students, parents, and teachers to test out the possibilities for such a system of bottom-up accountability. Participants in the IDEA Summer Seminar studied the history of legal and grass-roots advocacy for educational justice with legal scholars, civil rights attorneys, and community organizers. They joined educational researchers in examining existing public information about school conditions in greater Los Angeles. The participants then developed a set of strategies for gathering additional information at school sites and in the broader community. They designed and distributed surveys for students and parents in malls and shopping centers around L.A. Students conducted youth focus groups and interviews at schools and community centers. They shot photographs and video of classrooms. Parents developed and tested out a school observation check-list and spoke with teachers, counselors, and principals about what they observed. Together, students and parents questioned educational administrators and state elected officials about the problems they encountered and how they might be remedied. |
 IDEA’s summer participants found cause for anger and hope in their research. They discovered locked bathrooms, overheated and overflowing gyms, broken water fountains, missing textbooks, lifeless pedagogy, and degrading disciplinary practices. But, they also encountered many teachers and students who hold onto the ideal of education as the pathway to a better life and a more just community. And, through their interactions with lawyers, activists, and elected officials, the participants began to recognize their own power to act upon their outrage and change the conditions in their schools. |
This issue of Teaching to Change LA highlights the summer participants’ research and stories of anger, hope, and personal transformation. Student and parent research teams present the results of their studies as well as a set of tools (surveys, checklists, interview questions, etc.) that other students and parents can use to examine their own schools. We feature personal stories of students becoming ‘critical researchers’—young people like Cynthia Santiago who examine education with an awareness of inequality and a commitment to social justice. These are the stories of urban intellectuals, making sense of their lives, their schools, and their communities. Finally, we are pleased to present two original videos. The first, "Parents Take Action," provides a glimpse into how parents can bring their research and their fight for educational justice into the broader community. The second, "Just the Way It Is," backed by the music of the late urban intellectual Tupac Shakur, offers haunting images of the bleak reality in many California schools forty-eight years after Brown. As Tupac notes, the time has come "for us as a people to make some changes."
— John Rogers, Associate Director of IDEA
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Seminar Directors Ernest Morrell & John Rogers
IDEA would like to thank all of the legal scholars and advocates, community organizers, educational researchers, and public officials who met with participants in our Summer Seminar.
Sophie Finelli, ACLU
Andrea Ramos, Public Counsel
Gary Blasi, UCLA
Bill Koski, Stanford University
Jeannie Oakes, UCLA
Kirti Barenwal, Coalition for Educational Justice
Carlos Montes, El Centro Community Service Organization
Delaine Eastin, California Superintendent of Public Instruction
Richard Alarcón, California State Senator
Dede Alpert, California State Senator
Jerome Horton, California Assemblymember
Jenny Oropeza, California Assemblymember
We would like to thank the staff at the Salvation Army Youth Center in Pico Union for opening up their doors to our student researchers.
We would also like to thank the Public Interest Law Program at UCLA for providing the seminar with meeting rooms throughout the month of July.
Finally, a special thanks to UCLA Professor Daniel Solorzano and ACLU Attorney Rocio Córdoba, in their fourth year of service to the seminar, for providing us all with a powerful vision of what it means to struggle for educational justice.
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