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Progressive Social
Movements and
Educational Equity
Jean Anyon
City University of New York

This article places policy development in the context of progressive social
movements. It describes how social movements develop, and delineates some
of the accomplishments of such contestation in U.S. history as well as in
changes of education policy. The article closes by considering the possibilities
and challenges of current social movement building efforts for equity in U.S.
education policies.

Keywords: social movements; equity; community organizing; education policy

This article argues that progressive social movements have been?andcontinue to constitute?an important impetus for more equitable educa-
tion in the United States. To build my case, I discuss social movements as
part and parcel of the process of change in a democracy; I describe how
social movements develop and delineate some of the accomplishments of
progressive movements in U.S. history generally as well as specifically in
education. The article ends by considering the possibilities and challenges
of current social movement building efforts.

Social Movements

A social movement connects what may feel like personal, individual
exclusion or subordination to social structure and political causes. Social
movements also provide a way of connecting with other individuals and
groups across neighborhoods, cities, regions, and states to forge collective
solutions to social problems. They offer a forum for working together to
develop community power and to collaborate with others in making funda-
mental shifts in the political and social arrangements that have caused
inequities, exclusions, and subordination. Thus, social movements are not
symptoms of a ?dysfunctional? political system, as some earlier scholars

Educational Policy
Volume 23 Number 1

January 2009 194-215
? 2009 Corwin Press

10.1177/0895904808328523
http://epx.sagepub.com

hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

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Part 3: Sociopolitical Movements

Anyon / Progressive Social Movements and Educational Equity 195

argued (e.g., Neil Smelser, 1962). Rather, in a healthy democracy, social
movements are part and parcel of the process of change.

The concept of a social movement does not apply just to workers in
struggle for unions and higher wages. The concept applies to all people and
groups struggling for what political philosopher Nancy Fraser (2000) calls
recognition or redistribution?for racial rights, economic justice, women?s
reproductive freedom, or educational opportunities. Social movements can
also strive for negative goals like ending unpopular wars or seemingly
unwarranted invasion of other countries.

There have of course been movements on the political Right (e.g., the
?Right to Life? movement). But this chapter concerns progressive social
movements and what those involved in school reform and public engagement
can learn from them (to garner lessons from the Right; see Apple, 2006).1

A comprehensive definition of social movements, summarizing several
decades of sociological research, is as follows: We have a social movement
in process when individuals and organizations are involved in ?collective
conflictual relations with clearly identified opponents? (Della Porta & Diani,
2006, p. 20). The conflict involves ?an oppositional relationship between
actors who seek control of the same stake?be it political, economic or cul-
tural power?and in the process make . . . claims on each other which, if real-
ized, would damage the interests of the other actors? (Tilly, 1978, as cited in
Della Porta & Diani, 2006, p. 21). Thus, the conflict can be cultural and/or
political-economic. The conflict typically has as a goal to promote or oppose
social change. In a social movement, the actors engaged in the collective
action are linked by dense informal networks of organizations and individu-
als. They share a collective identity or sense of shared mission. The networks
and interactions between groups and members yield social and cultural
capital, which are important to bridging locales, groups, and opportunities,
and provide the skills involved in planning, mobilizing, and executing actions
and campaigns. People involved in a social movement typically feel a collec-
tive identity. They feel connected by a common purpose and share commit-
ment to a cause; they feel linked or at least compatible with a broader
collective mobilization (Della Porta & Diani, 2006; Touraine, 1981).

It is important to note that one organization, no matter how large, does
not make a movement. The dense and sometimes overlapping networks that
constitute a social movement are made up of multiple organizations, all of
which are in pursuit of a common goal (Della Porta & Diani, 2006; see also
Tilly, 2004; Touraine, 1981).

Nor are social movements isolated protest events or short-lived tempo-
rary coalitions that form around an issue. They involve episodes of action

196 Educational Policy

that are perceived as components of longer lasting action, over time?
typically multiple years of effort. Social movements use various forms of
protest against the specified targets and may also involve cultural expres-
sions of belief as in group singing and the production of art and music that
contain a social message.

In sum, when people feel excluded or subordinated, when people face
governments or other groups whose actions they believe are unjust, and
when they belong to networks or organizations that share goals and collab-
orate over long periods of time to attempt to increase equity through protest
and sustained political and social contention against the targeted groups,
they are engaged in a social movement, or social movement building.

Social Movements and Other Forms of Advocacy

In distinction from other forms of public advocacy for school reform,
social movements generally try to transform, rather than work within, the
political system. These other forms of public advocacy more commonly
aim less fundamentally at specific rights within the existing political and
social structures. Community organizing, for example, although occasionally
aimed at fundamental social change, is more typically geared toward specific
local issue campaigns. Thus, the Public Education Network is focused on
school improvement in low-income districts. Housing groups are focused
on the availability of affordable homes and apartments, and living wage
campaigns focus on raising the minimum wage. One could argue that these
groups seek fundamental changes to the social order, and indeed, I have
argued before (Anyon, 2005) and will argue later here that they may in
some cases constitute ?small social movements.? But when compared, say,
to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s or the Labor Movement of the
1930s, the goals of these efforts seem less tailored to effect fundamental
political and economic changes than to solve community problems.

Alliance building is another form of public advocacy, and here again
most alliances, when there is not a national social movement that has col-
lected everybody in a sweep toward one goal, are aimed typically at local
or metro area goals like job formation, public transportation access, or
housing reform. I describe several metro area alliances below and argue that
even though they may not be pursuing fundamental political or economic
change, they do offer a model of cross-sector collaboration that public
engagement efforts in education might emulate.

Anyon / Progressive Social Movements and Educational Equity 197

Most successful social movements are national in scope. As the U.S.
Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement suggest, full-blown social
movements engage the whole nation. This national scope and agenda are
part of what gives the movements power to demand fundamental political
or economic change. One of the important aspects sociologists identify in
national movements is the existence of umbrella organizations (e.g., Morris,
1984). Umbrella groups provide coherence and organization to the many
smaller groups agitating for change. Morris (1984) argues, for example,
that without groups like Southern Christian Leadership Committee (SCLC)
in the South, the Civil Rights Movement might have been rent by disagree-
ments over agenda and strategy.

Finally, social movements differ from other forms of public advocacy like
community organizing or creating networks and alliances in that when
movements form and grow they usually emerge from and build on these
other forms of activity. The Civil Rights Movement again provides an
example. As Black churches in the South began to publicly confront Jim
Crow segregation, the networks among women and families in congrega-
tions became vital links between communities; these networks allowed news
of activities to spread and encouraged participation in protest. Similarly, the
alliances that arose between Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,
SCLC, Congress on Racial Equality, and other Civil Rights organizations
were important spurs to growth of regional and then national planning.

Accomplishments of Social Movements

Progressive social movements have not always been successful (as the
aborted immigrants? rights movement of the early 21st century attests), but
throughout U.S. history, social movements from the political Left (the focus
of this article) have often had profound results. They have led to passage of
a number of social policies that have increased the rights of working
people, women, and minorities (e.g., the Populist Movement of the late
1800s, Socialist Movement of the early 1900s, the 1930s Labor Movement,
the Civil Rights Movement, and both women?s movements of the 20th
century). These social movements led to important policy accommodations
on the part of governments and social institutions.

Indeed, when social movements successfully apply national pressure,
they often result in legal or constitutional changes that increase the pool of
persons who can participate in U.S. democratic institutions.

The 20-yearlong women?s movement that culminated in women?s right to
vote in 1920 is a case in point. This women?s movement produced national

198 Educational Policy

pressure that culminated in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified
on August 18, 1920.

The Civil Rights Movement, of course, produced the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, which applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or
abridgment of the right to vote based on the use of literacy tests common in
the South. Enforced, this act allowed Black citizens to vote across the
United States?most for the first time.

The Labor Movement as well produced legislation in the 1930s that
made deep changes to the U.S. economic system; these transformations
limited business owners? power over workers and provided rights to workers
that were new?including the legal right of unions to organize and bargain,
an 8-hour limit to the legal work day, social security, and unemployment
insurance among others. It is doubtful that the political and economic
elites who governed would have passed such legislation limiting business
owners? rights over workers without the pressure of the social movements
of the 1930s.

Social movements can sometimes change education, as well?as I will
later describe in detail. Although in many ways education remains the same
as in 1900, there have been significant progressive changes wrought by the
concerted protest of social movements: Immigrant and labor organizations?
struggles for education in the late 19th and early 19th centuries yielded
adult worker education and Catholic schools for children; the Civil Rights
Movement led to national Head Start programs as well as increased recog-
nition and educational opportunities nationwide; Latino struggles produced
Bilingual education; the 1970s women?s movement yielded curricular
change as well as increased entitlements in schools and districts; disabilities
organizing also has prompted federal protections and entitlements. Low-
income parents in urban neighborhoods are today organizing for better
schools, and if their efforts continue and coalesce, they could potentially
build a social movement for educational civil rights. Groups like Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Industrial
Areas Foundation (IAF) are in the forefront of this struggle. I will describe
these groups later in this article.

There are many groups organizing for educational justice today (in New
York City, more than 100 grassroots groups are active). For the most part,
however, each group operates independently of the others; there is little if
any cross-state or national collaboration. An important lesson history teaches
is that no matter how active single actors or groups are in their struggle
against injustice and no matter what other methods we use to promote equi-
table education policies (e.g., research and scholarship, or collaboration

Anyon / Progressive Social Movements and Educational Equity 199

with school principals, districts, and state legislatures), it typically occurs
that efforts are strengthened if we make the long-term alliances and build
the power of a social movement.

The Development of Social Movements

How do social movements form, and what catapults them to national
attention at certain historical moments? Community and other grassroots
organizers work to transform subordinated or excluded people?s fear into
anger, moral indignation, and action directed at the system. Organizers
therefore provide information that demonstrates ways the system contributes
to personal difficulties. For people to take action against political or social
oppression, they must see systematic causes of their subordination. To
develop systemic analyses of subordination that accounts for people?s oppres-
sion, organizers discuss local issues by connecting personal and neighbor-
hood problems to regional, national, and sometimes global processes and
powerful groups (Della Porta & Diani, 2006).

Moreover, for people to take action, they typically must believe that they
have the power to bring about change (Piven & Cloward, 1977). To build
this confidence, movement organizers work to provide fledging groups with
small ?wins.? To attract members, organizers may also demonstrate to
recruits that participation in social movement organizations exhibits some
of the deepest pleasures of life?a sense of community and connectedness,
and meaning (Jasper, 1997).

Participation in movements is facilitated by a variety of personal and
social resources?sufficient income and time to attend meetings and protests,
available organizations and alliances to join, ties to these networks, and
effective leadership, among other resources (Diani & McAdam, 2003;
McAdam, 1982).

The prevailing cultural context may also influence participation in move-
ments. If critical public discourses, or artistic works such as novels, on the
topic of concern are available in the media?or if there is critical scholarship
that reaches people in communities?then ideas in support of change may
circulate in discussion and facilitate dissent and participation.

The political environment sometimes affects whether people join move-
ments and may contribute to the form and intensity of collective action. For
example, electoral instability in a country may encourage dissent and
protest. Political opportunities such as the availability of influential allies,
the tolerance for protest among elites, and the openness of the political

system may also facilitate social movement building (see McAdam, 1982;
McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 1998). In sum, sympathetic schol-
arly observers often see the ?zeitgeist? as important to whether and when
movements build and grow.

However, as I argued in a recent book (Anyon, 2005), a typically unac-
knowledged factor influencing the ascendance of social movements is the
decades of prior preparation, or what Civil Rights Movement activist Ella
Baker called ?spadework.? For example, Blacks in the South had been
resisting, demonstrating, and working the courts for five decades before the
movement gained national notice in the 1950s. The development over the
years of activist networks, organizations, and sympathetic legal decisions
laid the foundation for the success of the nationally catalyzing Montgomery
Bus Boycott in 1955.

Moreover, an open political system, an acceptance of protest by political
elites, is not always necessary for movements to build or ?erupt.? Movements
sometimes grow rapidly and come to flower during decades of political
conservatism and extreme repression. The decade in which the American
Civil Rights Movement burst onto the national scene in the Montgomery Bus
Boycott was a decade of virulent McCarthyism and conservative dominance
in politics. Moreover, the five previous decades of organizing and building by
community and labor organizers in the South took place in an exceedingly
repressive environment regarding racial rights (see Kelly, 1990).

Of importance to public engagement efforts today may be that the political
conservatism and federal attitude toward dissent in the 1950s was not terribly
different from the zeitgeist of the current era, as the Patriot and Homeland
Security Acts and the resulting abrogation of civil liberties to fight a ?War on
Terror? suggest. But there may be reason for optimism: The last quarter
century of community organizing for school reform may have prepared the
ground for substantial change. Ant the year 2000 brought with it 25 years of
legal battles at the state level to remove urban educational inequities. More
than 70% of these court cases have been successful, and many new state
mandates have been written by the courts; more than a few await the public
political pressure that might force full funding. These cases and the years of
education organizing that are behind us and that continue may provide the
legitimation and leverage needed for national movement building.

With collaboration, a joint vision, and a fortuitous catalyst, public
engagement efforts like education organizing and alliance building could
develop into a national social movement. What would facilitate this growth
is that education reformers engage with the public conversations and
actions that have emerged in low-income communities around issues that

200 Educational Policy

Anyon / Progressive Social Movements and Educational Equity 201

are intimately related to education achievement but have not been part of
most education reform efforts to date?struggles for living wages, decent
jobs, health care and housing, and immigrant rights (see Anyon, 2005, for
suggestions). If education activists were to collaborate with groups already
working in these social and economic arenas, we could conceivably think
of our activity as social movement building: the development of a social
movement for educational and economic justice.

Past Impacts of Social Movements on Educational Equity

Although not the only source of equity?upper class reformers, business
groups, and politicians have at times advocated successfully for new educa-
tional resources or opportunities?progressive social movements have made
substantial gains in increasing educational equity in America. Although we
do not usually think of social movements as characterizing U.S. educational
history in the early/mid-19th century, one can document substantial pressure
from below that contributed to important educational change during those
years.

The 19th Century

Horace Mann and his colleagues were not the only force pressing for the
establishment of common schools in America in the 19th century. Historian
Joel Spring (2008) points out that

[t]raditional labor history . . . stresses the key role of working men?s parties in
the late 1820s and 30s in fighting for common school reforms. This interpre-
tation places the American worker at the forefront of the battle for common
schools. Of particular importance . . . is the opposition of workers to the . . .
charity schools, which they felt reinforced social-class distinctions. (p. 100)

Active in the northeastern states of the United States, the Workingmen?s
Parties believed that ?kept in ignorance, workers could be deprived of their
rights, cheated in their daily business, and ?gulled and deceived? by . . . ?par-
asitic politicians,? ?greedy bank directors,? and ?heartless manufacturers??
(Russell, 1981, as cited in Spring, 2008, p. 100). These early union members
believed that knowledge was power: Knowledge, to be acquired in schools
available to everyone, was essential to protect workers? rights in the economic
system.

Irish Catholics also fought against the public schools they faced. Between
1850 and 1900, Irish church officials and Catholic parishioners fought
tenaciously against the public schools created by upper class reformers.
Catholics rebelled against the Protestantism and anti-Catholic sentiment
expressed in reading materials and personnel of the public schools. By
1900, they had established a wide network of Catholic schools for their
children (Ravitch, 2000; Spring, 2008). In addition to providing opportuni-
ties for Irish families around the turn of the 20th century, the establishment
of a system of Catholic Schools in America provided opportunities later for
children of color in cities as an alternative to public schools deemed deficient
by parents. The existence of a system of religious schools had ramifications
as well on federal education policy that continues to this day.

Foreshadowing later Civil Rights struggles, in the 1820s Boston?s African
American community, led by Black Abolitionist David Walker, began a 30-year
fight against segregated public schools in that city. Their contestation ulti-
mately led to a formal decision by the Massachusetts governor to end legal
segregation in the state. In September 1855, the Boston public schools were
legally integrated ?without any violent hostilities? (Spring, 2008, p. 121). As
we are aware, there would be more struggle necessary in the next century.

The 20th Century

During the Progressive Era, labor organizations, settlement house
reformers, and immigrant families all put pressure on public school admin-
istrators to respond to the needs of the immigrant working-class population.
Although there was a substantial effort in these reforms to ?Americanize?
newcomers, the schools were also responding to the pressures of the working-
class majority in cities like New York. Schools as social centers with
services enjoyed by many thousands of students and immigrant adults were
the result; the school as a social center soon developed throughout the
country at the turn of the 20th century (Spring, 2008).

The movement to establish teachers? unions radically changed the politics
of U.S. public education and increased equity for the teaching force.
Unionization of teachers increased their salaries and removed the most
egregious forms of administrative control over their employment.

Most teachers associations in the early part of the 20th century were
politically conservative. But teacher organizations in those years in New York
and Chicago had a radical ideology and developed out of the Labor Movement
(in the case of Chicago, there were close ties to the early women?s move-
ment as well). The teacher federations in both cities fought openly with

202 Educational Policy

Anyon / Progressive Social Movements and Educational Equity 203

conservative business interests and school administrators (Spring, 2008).
Out of these struggles?and in concert with less radical pressures exerted
by the more cautious teachers organizations?policies regulating the teach-
ing force were instituted that made teachers salaries and working conditions
considerably more equitable than they had been.

The 20th century Civil Rights Movement, of course, achieved many
educational victories for minorities. Although the Brown decisions in the
1950s did not initially bring about education integration in the South, they did
renew and strengthen activist organizing toward that end, and ultimately,
the decision delegitimated separate but equal accommodations in the civil
sphere. As a consequence of the national social movement for political
rights of Black Americans, this decision and others following it produced
vastly increased opportunities in education for people of color?in educa-
tional admissions, the availability of administrative positions, K-16 curricu-
lum offerings, expanded programs for students of color in public school,
and in federal, state, and local policies and programs that supported these
and other advances.2

The Head Start program, for instance, was a product of pressure from the
Civil Rights Movement. Black and White Civil Rights workers, most of
whom were involved in the 1960s in building Freedom Schools and the 1964
?Freedom Summer? (when scores of Northern college students went South to
assist in voter registration drives), developed a program in rural Mississippi
that provided education and services for poor children. Funded with War on
Poverty money, the centers were staffed by Civil Rights activists and local
people. After 2 years, in 1966, southern White politicians in Congress
succeeded in defunding these early Head Start centers in Mississippi. With
money from wealthy Northern supporters, activists and families took two
busloads of preschool children to Washington in protest.

There, with their teachers and teacher?s aides, they would show what
Head Start in Mississippi was all about. ?A romper lobby from Mississippi
petitioned Congress today for a redress of grievances,? was The New York
Times? lead in its February 12 story on what others were calling ?the
children?s crusade.? Forty-eight Black children and their teachers turned the
hearing room of the House Education and Labor Committee into a kinder-
garten, complete with pictures and children dragging ?quacking Donald
Ducks across the floor? (Dittmer, 1994, pp. 374-375).

Two weeks later, the Office of Economic Opportunity awarded the group
a grant to continue operations. Head Start moved to center stage in the
Johnson administration?s efforts to support the education of low-income

204 Educational Policy

minorities and has remained a major source of opportunity for the educa-
tion of young low-income children.

The women?s movement of the 1960s and 1970s also was responsible
for increased opportunities in education, specifically for female students. A
confluence of Civil Rights and feminist organizing during these decades
yielded not only laws and programs to protect and support people of color
but women as well. What follows is from a 1997 report by Bernice Sandler,
whose activism was central to the passage of Title IX, which outlaws and
provides penalties for discrimination against women in educational institu-
tions from elementary through university settings.

?The year was 1969. I had been teaching part-time at the University of
Maryland for several years during the time I worked on my doctorate and
shortly after I finished it. There were seven openings in the department, and
I had just asked a faculty member, a friend of mine, why I was not even con-
sidered for any of the openings. It was not my qualifications; they were excel-
lent. ?But let?s face it,? he said. ?You come on too strong for a woman.?

Was this really a question of my being ?too strong?? After all, there were
many strong men in the department. In the next few months, I had two more
similar rejections. A research executive who interviewed me for a position
spent nearly an hour explaining to me why he wouldn?t hire women
because they stayed at home when their children were sick. (That my
children were in high school was deemed irrelevant.) Then, an employment
agency counselor looked at my resume and told me that I was ?not really a
professional? but ?just a housewife who went back to school.?3

But this was 1969. Although sex discrimination was indeed illegal in
certain circumstances, I quickly discovered that none of the laws prohibit-
ing discrimination covered sex discrimination in education.

I began to do research on the status of women and the law, and read a
report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which examined the impact
of antidiscrimination laws on race discrimination. The report described a
presidential Executive Order prohibiting federal contractors from discrimi-
nation in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, and national ori-
gin. There was a footnote, and being an academic, I quickly turned to the
back of the report to read it. It stated that Executive Order 11246 had been
amended by President Johnson, effective October 13, 1968, to include
discrimination based on sex. This was what I needed!?

Sander then describes the research and organizing she and women all
around the country took part in to advocate for a law that would eliminate
sex discrimination in educational institutions. Several years later, they suc-
ceeded in arranging 7 days of Congressional hearings.

On June 23, 1972, 2 years after the hearings, Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972 was passed by the Congress and on July 1 was signed
into law by President Richard Nixon.

The historic passage of Title IX was hardly noticed (by the press).
I remember only one or two sentences in the Washington papers.

But Title IX would have a huge impact on education. It protects students,
faculty, and staff in federally funded education programs at all levels. Title
IX also applies to programs and activities affiliated with schools that receive
federal funds (such as internships or School-to-Work programs) and to feder-
ally funded education programs run by other entities, such as correctional
facilities, health care entities, unions, and businesses. The act covers admis-
sions, recruitment, educational programs and activities, course offerings
and access, counseling, financial aid, employment assistance, facilities and
housing, health and insurance benefits and services, scholarships, and
athletics. It also protects from discrimination against marital and parental
status. Both male and female students are protected from harassment
regardless of who is committing the harassing behavior.

A further example of increases in opportunities and resources resulting
from social movement pressure is the right to learn and be taught in one?s
native language. Federal legislation creating bilingual programs was imple-
mented in most parts of the nation originally as a result of organizing by
Puerto Ricans in New York City and Chinese residents of San Francisco
(Miguel & Miguel, 2004).

Tony De Jes?s and Madeline P?rez (in press) describe the first legal
decree that resulted in bilingual education. During the late 1950s and 1960s
in New York City, Puerto Ricans, aided by sympathetic African Americans
and Whites, continually protested at the Board of Education and met with
and petitioned the Board for the establishment of programs to support the
education of what were by the 1960s 80,000 Puerto Rican students in New
York City schools. Frustrated, ASPIRA (in conjunction with United Bronx
Parents, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and other Puerto
Rican organizations) in 1972 sued the Board for bilingual education
programs. ASPIRA activists wrote that

[we] chose to pursue the goal of establishing bilingual education for several
reasons, among them the need for the Puerto Rican community to demon-
strate that it was capable of defining policy solutions for the needs of its
children. Luis Nieves, director of