Researchers have examined the nature, effect and challenges of grassroots organizations. In an era of increasing venture capitalist and neoliberal influence in public education, community organizations are in an especially crucial but difficult position. Tensions from top-down policy often conflicts with the desires of the students, families, and practitioners participating in public education and trying to influence it from the ground up. The following articles highlight grassroots efforts in urban areas—more recently the centers for outside involvement in schools.

Kysa Nygreen writes in an article entitled, “Negotiating Tensions: Grassroots Organizing, School Reform, and the Paradox of Neoliberal Democracy” about urban grassroots organizing in education. The article refers to these groups as CBOs: community based organizations. Nygreen dissects the political atmosphere of education that CBOs must navigate and in attempting to learn the intricacies of the political forces and networks, consequently may be required to submit to or at least compromise with. The goal of Nygreen’s article is to help build a more “power-conscious understanding of education based community organizing.” (Nygreen, 2017)

The article follows the story of a community organization, Alianza, which worked to organize Latinx immigrant community members in an urban school distrtict. Alianza was a parent led grassroot whose initial aim was to create a democratically governed bilingual community school. Their efforts were matched on the opposite side of the political spectrum by strong handed neoliberal reformists. Subsequently, Alianza’s story ends with the group suspending their efforts to create a school to serve their community’s needs and instead compromised their initiative to create an after school program to help students raise their standardized test scores. This goal more closely related to the aims of the neoliberal reforms currently in place in the district.

Nygreen does well in pointing out that Alianza’s leaders were not merely passive to neoliberal pressures, instead, they were thoughtful and made “strategic trade offs in order to meet broader goals.” (Nygreen, 2017) Alianza’s story is not singular and demonstrates what many education-focused grassroots organizations face: the realization that “the path to education is not clear or obvious. It is a contested one that has to be forged on political terrain shaped by corporate and elite interests.” (Nygreen, 2017)

Another article published by Columbia University’s teacher’s College, focuses on the unique nature, influence, and multi-level impact of youth grassroots organizing. Youth organizing is dissected using a case study of ICUC: Inland Congregations United for Change. ICUC worked to end police violence in San Bernardino. They successfully rallied over 500 community members at their first public action, but really gained immense support from other youth of color when the mayor and chief of police’s promise to take initiative was later broken with the excuse of a lack of funds to implement such changes.

The researchers comment on the layers of positive impacts grassroots organizing can have on the youth involved on an individual level as well as a community level. Youth learn practice civic engagement and in the process develop critical consciousness around political issues. They learn valuable leadership skills and gain social capital as well as grow a sense of psychological empowerment. At the community level, youth voices hold different, sometimes, more powerful impact on rallying community support and drawing attention from those in positions of political power. (Christens, Dolan, and Lin, 2015)

Interestingly, Grassroots organizing around educational issues often overlap with more general community and municipal problems. This is because education serves children in the community that cannot remove themselves from their out-of-school influences or consequences when they enter the classroom. Educators are forced to respond to all of the multifaceted needs of their students and families. Therefore educational grassroots must be equally as inclusive.