Coalitions & Partnerships

Coalitions

CADRE participates in a number of local, statewide, and national coalitions related to educational justice in order to provide our members access to influence a wide range of policymakers whose decisions impact school conditions in South LA. They include:

Movement of Organizations Reforming Education in LA (MORE LA) - CADRE is a member of a local school reform coalition launched in 2006 involving progressive, membership-based community organizing groups and the teachers’ union, working to advance a progressive school reform agenda in the highest needs communities served by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).
Educational Justice Collaborative (EJC) - anchored by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, CADRE has been an active member since 2004 of a statewide collaboration among academic researchers, policy advocates, and community organizing groups across California to support a movement for systemic and progressive education reform.
Campaign for Quality Education (CQE) - Initiated by Californians for Justice, CADRE has been active in this statewide campaign since it launched in 2002 to win educational and racial justice by first ending the diploma penalty of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) requirement. Demanding investment in school quality rather than punishing individual students who do not pass the exam by denying them high school graduation, the CQE won a two-year delay of the requirement until 2006. Since then, the CQE has advanced statewide legislation to mitigate the negative impacts of the CAHSEE and create investment in school quality through school funding reform, teacher quality initiatives, and college preparation expansion.
Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) - CADRE is a member of the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC), a project of the Education Subcommittee of the Children’s Rights Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association that unites advocates, educators, organizers, and lawyers from across the country to reframe the debate around school discipline from one that aims to punish and exclude children from school, to a human rights perspective that respects the child’s right to an education, and advocates for child-centered, dignified reform to keep children in school. Our aim is to expose systemic problems in our nation’s school systems and provide solutions to end pushout and improve responses to school discipline.
United States Human Rights Network (USHRN) - CADRE is a member of this Atlanta-based, national network. The US Human Rights Network is made up of over 170 organizations and individuals from across the country working on such fundamental human rights issues as criminal justice, discrimination, health care, immigration, housing, labor, and education. Network members include organizers, lawyers, policy groups, educators, researchers, and scholars working together to bring the United States into compliance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other internationally recognized human rights instruments.

Partnerships

In addition to the coalitions above, CADRE has worked closely in partnership with a number of organizations whose work supplements our community organizing with innovative action research, training, and advocacy tools. Through the years, these partnerships have greatly contributed to CADRE's capacity to make social change.

Justice Matters! - Justice Matters’ mission is to bring about racially just schools by developing and promoting education policy rooted in community vision. Justice Matters believes that education policy will promote racial justice in schools only if it is shaped by a powerful vision for what such schools look like. Such a vision must be rooted in an understanding that low-income communities of color have wisdom, values and perspectives that contribute a great deal to racially just, high-quality schools. Such a vision must embrace the aspirations that low-income communities of color have for their children and communities. And such a vision must be informed by research and scholarship that is grounded in an analysis of institutional racism and that is conducted by scholars of color. When our school system is shaped by such a vision, it will provide low-income students of color with the education they deserve and will provide all students with a more relevant, holistic, compassionate, and profound learning experience.

CADRE and Justice Matters began a partnership in 2003 that led to our joint publication, "We Interrupt This Crisis - With Our Side of the Story: Relationships Between South LA Parents and Schools". Please visit Our Library under Publications/Reports to view this report. This partnership has been key to the foundation and development of CADRE's Standards of Parent Participation Project under our Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign.
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) - NESRI promotes a human rights vision for the United States that ensures dignity and access to the basic resources needed for human development and civic participation. Towards this end, NESRI works with organizers, policy advocates and legal organizations to incorporate a human rights perspective into their work and build human rights advocacy models tailored for the U.S. Human rights offer a conceptual and practical framework for the social justice community to come together and build a movement to ensure freedom, security and dignity for all people. NESRI supports its partners through research, analysis, and documentation; training; and building transnational and international links.

CADRE and NESRI joined forces in 2005 to generate Los Angeles-based research for the report, "Deprived of Dignity: Degrading Treatment and Abusive Discipline in New York City and Los Angeles Public Schools". Please visit Our Library under Publications/Reports to view this report. Since then, NESRI and CADRE have partnered to provide human rights training to South LA parents and produce human rights documentation of school discipline and pushout practices in schools. This partnership has been key to the foundation and success of CADRE's Right to Education Project under our Dignity and Respect for Parents Campaign.