“…But I believe there are compelling reasons that urban education—and urban educators—ought to be a fulcrum of movement building.

A most important reason is the theoretical location of urban education. Urban schools ate at the center of the maelstrom of constant crises that beset low-income neighborhoods. Education is an institution whose basic problems are caused by, and whose basic problems reveal, the other crises in the city: poverty, joblessness and low-wages, and racial and class segregation. Therefore, a focus on urban education can expose the combined effects of public policies, and highlight not only poor schools but the entire nexus of constraints on urban families. A well-informed mobilization centering on education would challenge macroeconomic federal and regional policies and practices as part of an overall plan to improve local educational opportunity.

Moreover, even though education is not guaranteed by the U.S Constitution, it is often construed as a civil right, and can be located ideologically in the long and powerful tradition of civil rights struggle (Anyon, 2005, p. 177-178).”