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The Public Education Reform Environment Before CEO

Education has been a "hot topic" in the District for decades.  At first, the focus of the conversation was simply that our schools were failing our young people.  The development of the burgeoning charter school sector and the schools takeover by the Mayor have dominated the conversation in recent years.  One constant thread through these conversations, however, has been the relative lack of involvement of those directly impacted by public education reform - parents and young people. When the Collaborative for Education Organizing (CEO) was first established, it performed a scan of the local landscape of education-oriented community-organizing activity and found, surprisingly, that for a city the size of Washington, there was little grassroots infrastructure dedicated to fixing our local schools.  Too few groups, too little support from donors and foundations, and too few people involved. CEO was created to help support existing efforts, build new capacities, and work to empower parents and students to take an active role in discussions on education reform and solutions.  Whereas there was only one or two viable nonprofits working in this space in 2007, today there are five healthy, vital community groups supported through CEO.  Collectively the five groups reach into every comprehensive District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) high school and more than 600 members and thousands more volunteers, all standing at the ready to make sure that DC residents are among the decision-makers in education reform.