In our paper, “‘A Beautiful Struggle’: Reimagining Neighborhood Schools in Urban Communities,” Karen Hunter Quartz, Shanté Stuart McQueen, and I studied overlapping school reform, demographic, and historical contexts that shaped how different stakeholder groups could participate in democratic processes to reimagine their school. We found three democratic tensions that played out amongst our participants: reform ends vs. means, public vs. private goods, and critical hope vs. despair. This paper was published in Teachers College Record.
Part of our analysis and findings is found below. It is a multi-layered timeline spanning the history of Neighborhood Middle School (a pseudonym). Because the image in the article is small and hard to read (for us olds, anyway), please find a larger, color version below.
