National

The new book Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out! features voices from the frontlines of a growing movement for educational justice across the United States. Organizers and activists recount their journeys to movement building, lift up victories and successes, and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to traditional education reform and privatization schemes.

The last few decades of disinvestment and privatization have devastated public schools across the country, especially those in poor and distressed neighborhoods and communities of color. But we shouldn’t simply try to roll back the clock: long before the present crisis many schools were already failing the children who needed an opportunity to learn the most.

Out of that failure a growing movement of parents, youth, educators and community advocates are charting a better path forward: community schools. The community schools model holds at its core both research-proven methods and hard-won local insight from community members about what is most needed locally, which is what makes it a powerful evidence-based equity strategy!

Schott Foundation President & CEO Dr. John H. Jackson talks about the importance of love and happiness as we work give students the opportunities they need.

For over two decades the Schott Foundation has been a bridge, connecting philanthropy with community to resource broad based community-led movements for education equity. Part of building and reinforcing that bridge includes challenging structural racism in philanthropy and uplifting solutions rooted in equity through critical and thoughtful dialogue and trust in the power of community voices and community organizing for sustained change. We explored the unique journeys of three white philanthropic leaders striving toward race, gender and economic equity. Participants talked about when they first got “woke,” what they consider their role in philanthropy to be, how they have dealt with mistakes and criticism along the way, where they go for resources and support in their journey, how they hold themselves accountable to communities of color, and much more!