Education

Bringing Human Rights to Education with CADRE

We partner with Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE), community-based, grassroots organization forged by low-income parents of color in South Los Angeles, to promote a human rights-based approach to education to help build local and national movements to end school pushout.

National Training and Networking

In 2004, NESRI began a partnership with CADRE to use a human rights framework for education in local campaigns to guarantee parents' right to participate in school decision-making and to stop young people from being pushed out of school.  We developed a model for using human rights in U.S. education organizing that combines human rights training for community leaders, participatory documentation, and policy advocacy based on human rights demands. NESRI and CADRE now work together engaging parent and youth organizations around the country in using human rights.

NESRI and CADRE co-produced the manual, Bringing a Human Rights Vision to Public Schools: A Training Manual for Organizers, and helped found the Dignity in Schools Campaign, a national coalition of parents, youth, advocates and educators united to end pushout and promote a human rights framework for education in the United States.

Highlights from the Human Right to Education Campaign 2005-2007

NESRI supported CADRE’s Human Right to Education Campaign to reduce the use of suspensions and “push outs” in South Los Angeles schools and to ensure that parents have a say in how discipline policies are developed and implemented.  We provided human rights trainings to parent leaders, carried out participatory documentation projects, and helped mobilize local and national support to change discipline policies in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).  In 2007, CADRE’s efforts lead to the successful adoption of a new district-wide preventive discipline policy in Los Angeles public schools. Below are highlights from their campaign.

South Los Angeles People’s Hearing – In 2006, CADRE held a South Los Angeles People’s Hearing to share parent testimonies and research on human rights violations resulting from school discipline practices, and to present their human rights demands for a new discipline policy focused on prevention and supporting students. Read: CADRE’s human rights documentation report. 

CADRE Victory – The LAUSD School Board adopted a new Discipline Foundation Policy for School-wide Positive Behavior on February 27, 2007 aimed at reducing suspensions by preventing and constructively intervening in patterns of misbehavior. CADRE organized support in Los Angeles and around the country to help pass this new policy, which represents a positive step toward changing the harsh suspensions that students now face. CADRE is now monitoring implementation of the policy. Read  “A Parent-Led Victory in the Fight to End Pushout in Los Angeles Schools”.

Deprived of Dignity – In 2007, NESRI and CADRE released the report, Deprived of Dignity: Degrading Treatment and Abusive Discipline in New York City and Los Angeles Public Schools. The report includes findings of parent and youth focus groups conducted with CADRE and shows that middle and high school students in Los Angeles are frequently ignored and mistreated in their classrooms, and subjected to harsh discipline policies that punish, exclude and criminalize them.