Q: How did you two get involved in the Coalition?

  LISTEN [2 minute, 32 seconds]

WILLIAMS: I'm one of the founding members of CC9, the Community Collaborative to Improve District 9 Schools. I was involved all those years working with CC9 before we decided to merge all the collaboratives in the city; one was BEC, the Brooklyn Education Collaborative, where Zakiyah is from. I wanted to be a part of making sure that we were able to expand citywide. So, as we formed CEJ, I wanted to be there at the beginning.

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: I was part of the Brooklyn Education Collaborative. We were working on reforms in particular districts in Brooklyn, and we realized that if we wanted to make real change — because it wasn't just about Brooklyn, and it wasn't just about the Bronx — if we wanted to bring equity and excellence throughout the school system in New York City, that we had to come together. That's what we did. Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx got together to try to make real change, which we've done.

Getting Started in Local Collaboratives

Q: How did you get involved in your local collaboratives in the first place? What led you to become part of the collaborative?

  LISTEN [3 minute, 38 seconds]

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: Like most parents, I was involved in my children’s schools — PTA officer in the school, school leadership team member, just volunteering time. And then branching out — I was part of the [United Federation of Teachers] parent outreach; in each borough, the UFT has a parent liaison, and I was part of that. We started to have conversations around schools, and then the Community Involvement Program, at that time at New York University,¹ was creating collaboratives, and CC9 had already been in place by the time I got started. We started having conversations about how do we do this, what was happening in the Bronx and Brooklyn. We started having meetings, and BEC was created, and that led to CEJ.

So I started as grassroots as you can get: being involved in schools and PTAs, and then realizing once you start getting involved that everything is not equal. In the system there are a lot of children that may not have as much as your child does because you are an advocate. How do we ensure that that does not happen, that all children have the best education possible?

WILLIAMS: I became involved through my local organization, which is Highbridge Community Life Center. Highbridge was working on a project to develop leaders in the community, to have a leadership group to oversee the project they were working on. The leadership group had to develop a vision for how they saw the community. One of the things we realized very soon after taking part in that initiative, in order for the community to improve, the schools had to improve. So we created a subcommittee of the leadership group and named it United Parents of Highbridge.

I happened to be a member of that group, too. We started looking into what needed to be improved in the schools. We started with little stuff, like just getting a crossing guard in front of the schools, which seemed like it was little but it was major for our kids. So that was my involvement with Highbridge.

Like Zakiyah, I also was part of the New York City public school system by being a parent association president for three years at my kids’ school, as well as president’s council treasurer at the district level. And I realized that being involved with the PA is one thing; it was great to have that parental involvement. But I didn't really get a good sense of what was going on in the schools until I started being a part of the Highbridge group and realized there was so much that needed to be happening in the schools. That has kept me involved, coming up with ways of improving what was happening in the system.

Moving to Citywide Issues

Q: Now that you've created this citywide organization, what issues have you focused on?

  LISTEN [3 minute, 19 seconds]

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: When we started off as a citywide collaborative, we made a conscious decision to work on middle school. BEC started working on science in Brooklyn, and we grew that into a citywide initiative, where now, by 2010, the Board of Education has committed to make sure that all middle schools have science labs, which is a big issue. It was a big problem in New York City: many schools with middle grades didn't have science labs, yet there was an eighth-grade component on the science test that involved labs.

That was a big one. That was $444 million put toward ensuring that all schools with middle grades had science labs.

WILLIAMS: We felt that those were the grades that the school system and everybody else just forgot about. The Department of Education had put so much money into elementary school and into developing their famous high school [reform], making high schools smaller, and not really paying attention to the transition that children make from elementary school to middle school and from middle school to high school, and how they were suffering there. Going through puberty and their hormones out of control, and transitioning from being a young child to being an adult, but not there yet, they suffered the most and had the most issues, as far as trying to adjust to middle school.

Not just socially, but with academics as well. In middle school you had teachers who were less trained in the subjects they teach — they just threw any teacher in a class — and they suffered terribly. So we wanted to address the issues that were facing middle school and felt that this would help prepare young people to transition into high school and have them better prepared to graduate high school in four years with a Regents diploma and be prepared for college and the world of work. We felt that that is where kids suffered the most and needed the most attention.

So we rallied around middle schools and brought that to the attention of the Department of Education and anyone else who would listen. And it seemed to work. We were able to secure a Middle School Success Initiative in the Department of Education, and they put $30 million behind a comprehensive reform for low-performing middle schools in New York City.

  LISTEN [6 minute, 43 seconds]

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: In 2007, we came out with our first report, which was CEJ’s breakout (NYCCEJ 2007). We did it on the steps of Stuyvesant High School, because that was one of the highest-performing, if not the highest-performing, high school in New York City. And we said, why can't all kids go there? That was what we were trying to represent.

We had a huge press conference with parents and youth, we had a ton of press out there. It was a great first step. We called for Chancellor [Joel] Klein to meet with us to discuss how we're going to make change.

There was almost a perfect storm as CEJ started, because the test scores for middle schools had come out either that day or the day before, and they showed just what we were saying: that for some reason our children are getting through elementary school and they're at higher levels — we know that there can be improvement, but they're much higher — and then by the time they get to middle school, it's a downward staircase. And for the last two or three years, it's been constant. The same type of dynamic has been happening.

We called for a middle school task force. We met with the Speaker of the City Council, and she was on line with that, because that was something she wanted to address. They created the task force, and myself and another parent from CEJ, Carol Boyd, sat on the task force.

In the process, we at CEJ had already been talking and visiting different schools in different parts of the country. We went to Boston, and all over, to get a sense of schools that are working in neighborhoods that looked like ours. What's happening in those schools that's different from what's happening in our schools? We had already created — and it was hard work — what we called our middle schools success plan. We were parents at the table with the likes of Pedro Noguera and Charlotte Frank, who were our co-chairs, and Michele Cahill from Carnegie [Corporation of New York]. And we had principals sitting at the table with us, and business people there. And that's how we think things should happen. It's a collaborative effort; everybody's on the same page about how to make change. And out of that came our first set of recommendations, which we presented at a press conference in August of 2007, with Klein and [Mayor] Bloomberg saying that they were going to invest not only in our platform, but that they were committing a total of $30 million into fiftyone of the lowest-performing middle schools in New York City.

From there, we took off with our next report.

WILLIAMS: We do our research, first of all. We've got a name [behind the research], like the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, to validate CEJ’s reports. And the report was done with data from the state department of education, from the [city] Department of Education, so it was undeniable data. When we called on the Department of Education and the City Council to stand with us and create this task force to look at middle grades, we were in a sense saying that we've done our report and we feel that these are the issues that are happening in middle school, but we want to be certain about it, and we want you to be a part of helping us discover exactly what needs to happen to the middle grades, but first to admit that there is a crisis in the middle grades, and then to work with us to come up with solutions.

It was all-inclusive. Zakiyah said earlier about how we work in collaboration with people, and we feel that is the best way to have success. So we were able to convince [policy-makers] that this report was a valid report, and that there was a crisis in the middle grades, and to work with us to make sure we come up with solutions to make changes and improvements in what was happening in the middle grades.

That was how we were able to be successful. Everyone, all stakeholders involved, had a stake in what was to happen. It all boils down, ironically, to what we had in our report anyway.

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: At CEJ, it's never about, “Oh, we won something, that's great! Let's sit back and enjoy it.” It's always next steps, next steps. How do we push this further? How do we make more changes to more schools? How do we get parents involved? How do we get more stakeholders in this conversation? How do we create our allies?

WILLIAMS: Our last report (NYCCEJ 2009) was about high school graduation requirements. We're calling for a working group to see what is in place [to help children achieve] the new standards for high-schoolers starting in ninth grade this year, and how we can make sure there's something in place even though there's a crisis in the budget. Something still has to be in place now to help kids who are going to be looking at these new standards.

Dealing with Challenges

Q: As you describe the middle school work, it sounds like a case of providing information and bringing it to policy-makers’ attention. But especially with resources tight, there must have been some questioning and some resistance. How did you deal with that?

  LISTEN [5 minute, 12 seconds]

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: The way you say it makes it sound as if it was easy, but this was constant. We have not let up. We bring things to policymakers, people who can make changes, [but] it's about us being at the table also. It's about us constantly being in their faces, but collaboratively and respectfully, which is key. We follow the process along. Even though we moved on to K-12, conversations are still being had around middle school, and we're still at the table on that level.

WILLIAMS: We're constantly thinking strategically about our moves. To have the speaker of the City Council call for this task force, we didn't have too much resistance. We are able to use the influence of those folks who are able to get the job done to help us push our agenda forward.

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: I can't reiterate enough, it was not easy. It was a lot of hard work; there were some tears involved. But once we issued our first report, and then our second report, CEJ had the respect of people in New York City. We are a parent-led organization, and they know that we will not let up on youth, but at the same time, we're willing to work together. We're open, we're respectful of their conversation, but we don't have a problem pushing back.

That's another thing that's allowed us to knock down that barrier of resistance. We've connected ourselves, as Ocynthia said, with allies, and we've empowered our base of parents. By being a community-based organization, it's not just the [CEJ] steering committee; it goes out to the larger group. It's about bringing in more parents. Once you involve parents and empower more parents who understand the process, then they can go on and speak on things themselves. It may not be at a formal CEJ meeting, but they may say, “I was at a CEJ meeting and I heard X, Y, and Z. How come we don't know about this?” So it's about empowering parents and youth.

The respect we've gotten lessens some of the resistance. We still get some, but for the most part it's not what we got when we first set our foot out in CEJ.

WILLIAMS: We also don't come off as if we know everything. Our main agenda is truly about improving the quality of education for kids in New York City. We're not the experts on what needs to happen. We can just bring attention to the issues that we feel are the issues, based on our research and what's happening in our communities. We're open. We tell people to look at these things and read our reports and improve them.

Q: As you move forward, what challenges do you face? What is it like to have a coalition of volunteers? Does that make things challenging, and how do you deal with that?

  LISTEN [10 minute, 31 seconds]

WILLIAMS: The challenges we have are just as they would be if CEJ weren't doing anything. We have a system that is built on racism — when I say a system, I mean in this country — that is built on inequities in communities of color. That's a huge challenge trying to get through that barrier.

On a local level, as far as CEJ, our barrier now is funding — money. Having foundations believe in the work that we are doing, to make sure they continue to fund school organizing, which is not that popular of a thing to be doing in these times (although recently it's become a little more popular since we have a president who was a community organizer).

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: In the beginning we faced challenges, because we were getting parents together, and they're not used to working in a certain area together. But there is no place that I know of where, on a Saturday from 10 to 2, you can get a roomful of forty parents, happy to come, happy to see each other, sharing and conversing and talking about real issues that are affecting their kids. Once a month, on a Saturday, the room is full. And we get stuff done. It's a lengthy agenda, because the system is big, and there are a lot of things to do. And because we're connected to other collaborations — for instance, we're working on the [issue of] mayoral control, we're part of the Campaign for Better Schools, and previously we were part of Put the Public Back in Public Education, now we're One New York around the budget cuts — it's never-ending.

We're of like minds with regard to what our focus is: educating kids and making sure the system looks as good as it could, especially in neighborhoods of color, as Ocynthia said. Because the majority of parents in CEJ are Black and Latino parents. The reality is, if you look at the numbers, in our neighborhoods, our children are failing horribly. And we know they can do much better. It's about, how do we make that happen? How do we make it so that it's not just our forty kids, or however many parents are in that room, [who] are excelling just like kids at Stuyvesant? What keeps us together is that focus, that we do have successes, that the information is real.

We're accountable to each other; we're accountable to our parent members. We have transparency. As horrific as it is, the data comes from Annenberg [Institute research]; the data is real. As painful as it is, it is so right on. And we literally have meetings where we're tearing up and crying because we see, what's going to happen to our kids? On the high school requirements, the data they were giving us, if we don't do something, create something new, our kids are going to be falling by the wayside. If we think they're failing now, it's not going to get any better with Regents diplomas required. ² It's not that we don't want them passing with the Regents diplomas — if a real plan is not put into place, we know we're going to be back, way back in the day. We'll be going backwards, and we don't want to be going backwards.

When we go to meetings, our voice is one, which is really important. Even when people come in for the first time, new, and they come with their own agenda, or they try to, we have created such a focus that you are almost forced not to agree with everything that's said, but to fall in line with the way decisions are made — collaboratively, by consensus. You can't go against us, because we have built this great machine, and it's really going forward. At the end, you want to be part of it, because you see that we're real, we're going forward, and you realize what we really want to do is make change for all children's lives.

WILLIAMS: One of the [challenges we face] is in DOE itself. We've been great with our organizing, we've been great with bringing attention to the issues, but suppose the administration changes? Suppose the elected officials we've made great relationships with change over? Those are things that we have to worry about. We're coming up with solutions to deal with those things, but they are things that could become issues for us.

But as Zakiyah said earlier, our focus is the kids, and it's going to take a whole lot — I don't think there's anything that can stop us from moving forward. We have the passion. We have the energy and the will to make this happen. So we organize strategically to deal with all the issues that confront us.

Improving schools is not something that's new to this country. People have been trying to do it forever. But we are just this group in New York City who feels that we don't have a choice. We have to do this.

Sharing the Story with a Wider Audience

SHAAKIR-ANSARI: We work in New York City, but Ocynthia and I and others have been to other parts of the country and been on panels and talked about how we as parents do what we do. And we're no different from any other parent in any other part of the country who wants the best for her kids. It's about mobilizing enough of us together to have one voice. And it's about being open to working collaboratively. And it''s really about being strategic. Because as much as we don't want to deal with politics in education and we don't feel it belongs there, it's there, and you as parents have to figure out how you make it work for you.

[What works is] having allies among top politicians, and doing your homework — know laws, know regulations — because you can't deny them. And it's about working together. You've got to have a collaborative way of thinking.

WILLIAMS: It has been such a great experience being a part of CEJ and this whole fight. Meeting so many different parents and people in this business who are about improving schools, it's been such a thrill for me. I do this work on a volunteer basis, but it's my passion, a part of the fabric of who I am as a person. I was born in South Carolina, went to segregated schools, so I know how important it is for our children, kids of color in New York City, to get a first-rate education.

It's a great thing to be part of this organization, to share this story, and hopefully, by sharing this story, inspire someone in another community whom we haven't been able to touch yet to try to do the same kind of work we're doing. If we are able to inspire enough people, it'll trickle across this country, and maybe collectively we can do something to improve the quality of education for kids of color in this country.