Why Are Studies of Neighborhoods and Communities Central to Education Policy and Reform?

To understand the long shadow of education policy and reform in the United States, especially in the urban core, requires a full and elaborate understanding of the neighborhoods and communities that have transformed in the last 20 or 30 years. Studying classrooms and educational spaces without concomitant understanding of the dynamics and facets of neighborhood life render educational, political, and policy analyses potentially incomplete. Nuanced studies of neighborhood life, like those of Mary Pattillo’s (2013) through her ethnographic approach to understanding the macrorealities of racial and social class change in one neighborhood within the Black Belt of Chicago, render important observations of poverty, segregation, and economic fragility on one hand. On the other hand, the focus on youth in these microapproaches by Pattillo and others (Hyra, 2008; Sharkey, 2013) provides important indicators to the well-being and health of schools, the experiences of young people, and the social and economic opportunities for the youth in a community or neighborhood. More than ever, educational researchers use the study of place to illustrate particularities and contestations within neighborhoods and communities to highlight larger ecological contexts of schools, policies, and educational institutions (Miller & Bourgeois, 2013; Tate, 2012; Yeakey, 2012).

In many ways, the authors in this special issue of Urban Education who examine the role of communities and community-based approaches to education reform and policy in urban schools and spaces raise new questions about the possibilities for studying the dynamic nature of neighborhoods and communities on the cusp of incredible social, cultural, racial, geographic, and political changes. This afterword serves to remind the reader of the key issues in each article and identify the key questions raised from the authors for implications for more robust study of neighborhoods, communities, and education policy.

In the first article by Vasquez Heilig, Ward, Weisman, and Cole, the authors provide an historical discussion of the state of California’s new law that promotes a community-based approach that creates local control and accountability for school finance. Against much of the largely top-down educational policy approaches that purport to achieve accountability, Heilig and authors describe the emergence of community-based approaches to accountability and school finance legislation in the United States. Their article rests around the central question “How does the design of new local, community-based accountability legislation change the role of communities in education policy and change historical inequities in the way schools are funded in California?” But results of this very legislation are not yet evident. The authors suggest that community-based reform processes are extremely political, regurgitate some of the same power struggles that exist between state and local agencies and actors, and may not be the panacea to matters that plague already existing capacity challenges in underserved and underrepresented urban communities.

The second article by Trujillo, Hernandez, Jarrell, and Kisell provides oral histories and school reform narratives about the tensions and opportunities of reform agenda underway in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). By analyzing the political histories of key actors and players in the support for or resistance to the OUSD full-service community schools policy in 2011, the narratives briefly portray their lived histories and forms of engagement illustrative of larger discussions about structural racialization and battles over power and democratic access in urban reform policy making. These oral histories do not give a monolithic or narrow perspective of community urban school reform; instead the complex narratives reveal legacies of divergence, contestation, conflicts, and tensions in the midst of reform metaphors and myths about the possibilities of school change in an urban, multilingual, and multicultural school district.

The third article by Green and Gooden uses critical urban theory to guide an analysis of out-of-school challenges that instigated a neighborhood-driven community school implementation in an urban Midwest community. Taken from a larger multicase study, the authors report on interviews with school and community leaders and stakeholders about the challenges and opportunities implementing a community schools reform strategy. Data from their study reveal layers of historical impacts of school desegregation policies and school closures that have had detrimental effects on neighborhoods, communities, and schools. Their call is for more community-centric educational leaders who have a deeper set of skills to analyze and address community needs at the intersection of schools within larger neighborhood dynamics and realities.

The final article by Horsford and Sampson depicts through a descriptive case of the Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative how a low-capacity community in the American West engages in community capacity building activities to improve their schools through the Promise Neighborhood grant competition. Although the neighborhood initiative was not funded, the story of the chapter reveals much more interesting and palpable results about how neighborhoods and communities attempt to transform themselves through a federal urban policy agenda within the Obama Administration. Much like the other chapters, Horsford and Sampson’s chapter suggests that bottom-up reforms like those that support community capacity building may in fact be like the rock of Sisyphus where one step up yields two steps back. Community capacity building for economically distressed and racially minoritized communities is extremely challenging, and funding efforts to revitalize neighborhoods may not be equitable across communities and neighborhoods whose leveraged support or stakeholders are neither the same nor obvious in efforts to fund community-based reforms.

Clearly, more work is needed to analyze the competing demands of building education reform in neighborhoods and communities undergoing transformation as a result of sociopolitical and economic changes. Educational researchers, especially those studying urban contexts and spaces, are finding it increasingly important to look beyond the school context to find answers to questions that go on inside school walls, school board offices, and places of usual study and examination. This special issue moves the needle further and provides plenty of possibilities for future inquiry concerning the role of neighborhoods and communities in the study of educational politics, policies, and practices.