Chapter 7: Forgotten Stakeholders: Mobilizing Across Divides to Create a Community-Based Educational Program

Nearly a third of the nation’s public school students, and slightly more than half of the nation’s minority youth, attend schools in urban areas (NCES, 2010a, 2010b). Urban schools, especially in the nation’s inner cities, are often understood as operating in various stages of disrepair and/or need (Anyon, 1997; Lipman, 2011; Payne, 2008; Ravitch, 2014). These are places where constrained city coffers, access and retention of qualified instructors, limited material resources, and curtailed curricula in response to state and federal benchmarks are engendering poor schooling conditions. These complex and interrelated factors are engaged at length by policy-makers, academics, politicians, and educational reformers who understand that change is needed. There is great debate amongst these actors regarding how to address these issues. Yet, in the midst of these discussions, I have found that a central component to the schooling equation is often overlooked. When calling on stakeholders to mobilize around schooling conditions, urban community voices, individuals and collectives most immediate in the lives of inner-city youth are conspicuously absent (Duncan, 2009; Obama, 2009; Russakoff, 2015). They are not seen as stakeholders. Although their efforts commonly go unrecognized in reform conversations, urban community groups are still responding to educational needs in their communities and doing so in dynamic ways. I argue that there is much we can learn from the work of these forgotten stakeholders, and it is this focus that brought me to the community organization, Adventures in Science Education (AISE). AISE, located in Philadelphia, PA, is an out-of-school time ¹ hands-on STEM education program serving inner city African American youth. It unites individuals from various community groups who cross geographic and cultural borders within the city of Philadelphia to create a space that supports student learning and self-discovery. These collectives come from local universities, religious communities, and the city school system—common anchor institutions within our nation’s metropoles. Through AISE, these individuals create a single community built on a common goal—to support African-American students’ access to a hands-on STEM education.²