KEY FINDINGS

Findings from the six-year research study reveal that sophisticated organizing at the grassroots level can indeed make major contributions to improving student achievement, as well as to other important areas such as school-community relationships, parent involvement and engagement, sense of school community and trust, teacher collegiality, and teacher morale.

Our 2008 report Organized Communities, Stronger Schools quantified, measured, and linked the impacts of community organizing to specific performance indicators. We found strong and consistent evidence across multiple data sources that effective community organizing is:

• contributing to higher student educational outcomes through higher attendance, test score performance, high school completion and college-going aspirations;
  
  
• building school-community relationships, parent involvement and engagement, and trust in schools that contribute to improved schools;
  
  
• stimulating important changes in educational policy, practices, and resource distribution at the system level that expand school capacity and equity in historically underserved communities.

Our 2004 report Constituents of Change described the study sites; analyzed each group’s school reform goals, strategies, and methods; and provided descriptive data on the urban schools and districts the study sites are organizing to improve.