Looming Crisis or Historic Opportunity? Meeting the Challenge of the Regents Graduation Standards

This report does not take a position on the merit of the New York State Board of Regents exams as an accurate or equitable measure of high school proficiency. Rather, given the need to couple higher standards with equitable and effective supports for all the city's students to meet those standards, the report argues that it is imperative that the city system increase curriculum rigor and enrichment, expert teaching, and support services and focus intensively on improving schools serving African American, Latino, and low-income students

Comparing Solutions: An Overview of Day Labor Programs

Overview of day labor program models, philosophies behind each model, pros and cons, costs, results, and the impact on day laborers and community of each type of program

Overcoming Obstacles to Transformation: Challenges on the Way to a New Unionism

[Excerpt] The change to organizing requires more than a shift in resources. It is difficult to imagine a sustained commitment to organizing at the grass roots unless locals have the tools, skills, and strategic perspective necessary to mount successful organizing campaigns. Ultimately the commitment to building the labor movement inherent in the organizing priority challenges unions to alter organizational cultures that are often deeply imbued with traditional and conservative approaches to trade unionism. The struggle to succeed at organizing, to maintain representation, and to alter union culture is forcing national unions to define their role in this process and to reassess their relationships with locals. A key objective of the research reported here is to help clarify the issues at stake in the process of the change to organizing at the local level. Although there are few definitive answers, the experiences of locals struggling with the realities of juggling organizing and representational responsibilities should guide the search for sustainable conversion

Is There A Women’s Way Of Organizing? Genders, Unions, and Effective Organizing

[Excerpt] Between spring of 2008 and summer 2009, Cornell ILR Labor Programs faculty, staff, and students conducted a project to investigate and analyze several recent examples of women-focused union organizing campaigns. Our purpose was to contribute to the ongoing debates among labor and community activists about how to organize more effectively. We wanted to learn from the actual lived experiences of the women who were organizing about what they felt were effective strategies. We used as a starting point the work done by the Berger-Marks Foundation in their important study, “Women Organizing: How Do We Rock the Boat without Getting Thrown Overboard?” (2004), and the subsequent work outlining successful strategies used in women-focused union campaigns, “I Knew I Could Do This Work: Seven Strategies that Promote Women Activism and Leadership In Unions” (Institute for Women’s Policy Research 2007). The intent of the project was to answer the following questions: 1. Is there a successful way of organizing that is unique to women-focused organizing campaigns? 2. Among the seven strategies identified in the Institute for Women’s Policy Research report, which strategies are most often used, and how successful are they in ensuring the success of these organizing efforts? 3. Are there other strategies or ideas here that should be assessed, propagated, and perhaps generalized to organizing in other contexts that might help unions increase their success in organizing? 4. Are these new strategies? Or are they rooted in older models that are reemerging to challenge not only the traditional organizing practices of unions, but also the way unions view organizing and organizers’ roles

Rethinking the Teacher Pipeline for an Urban Public School System

Presents a case study of community organizing for school reform by Chicago ACORN: how its coalition of community groups, training programs, teacher unions, and others shaped leadership development, district policy, school capacity, and student outcomes

New York City's Middle-Grade Schools: Platforms for Success or Pathways to Failure?

This report, which is part of the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice's (CEJ) campaign to transform the city's middle-grade schools into platforms for success for all our city's students, demonstrates that New York City's middle-grade schools are failing to prepare students for the rigorous high school work that will enable them to succeed in college. That failure assumes crisis proportions for African American and Latino students. This report is the next stage in CEJ's campaign to mobilize the energies of parents, students, community organizations, advocacy and policy groups, youth and social service agencies, and religious organizations to transform our middle-grade schools from pathways to failure into platforms for success for all our city's public school students

ILR Labor Advance, Fall 2009

ILRNewsletter_fall09.pdf: 225 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The Worker Center Handbook: A Practical Guide to Starting and Building the New Labor Movement

[Excerpt] Worker centers are becoming an important element in labor and community organizing and the struggle for fair pay and decent working conditions for low-wage workers, especially immigrants. There are currently more than two hundred worker centers in the country, and more start every month. Most of these centers struggle as they try to raise funds, maintain stable staff, and build a membership base. For this book, Kim Bobo and Marién Casillas Pabellón, two women with extensive experience supporting and leading worker centers, have interviewed staff at a broad range of worker centers with the goal of helping others understand how to start and build their organizations. This book is not theoretical, but rather is designed to be a practical workbook for staff, boards, and supporters of worker centers. Geared toward groups that want to build worker centers, this book discusses how to survey the community, take on an initial campaign, recruit leaders, and raise seed funds. Bobo and Casillas Pabellón also provide a wealth of advice to help existing centers become stronger and more effective. The Worker Center Handbook compiles best practices from around the country on partnering with labor, enlisting the assistance of faith communities and lawyers, raising funds, developing a serious membership program, integrating civic engagement work, and running major campaigns. The authors urge center leaders to both organize and build strong administrative systems. Full of concrete examples from worker centers around the country, the handbook is practical and honest about challenges and opportunities

Building Capacity for ESL, Legal Services, and Citizenship

Provides a funders' guide to opportunities, strategies, and resources for promoting immigrants' civic integration by investing in a local infrastructure of services, including English instruction, legal services, and assistance with naturalization