In late 2022, we finished a year long impact evaluation, conducted by COMM|VEDA consulting. Click here to read the full report, Living on A Learning Edge: CJSF’s Impact on Education Justice. 

 

According to those surveyed and interviewed, CJSF’s impact has been far-reaching. The report says:

​

Partners, members, and network allies alike noted that CJSF holds deep content expertise in education justice, operates from a place of moral conviction, and invests deeply in building trusting relationships. Data from our evaluation show that CJSF has influenced the field of education justice in the following ways: 

RESOURCING EDUCATION JUSTICE AND SHIFTING PHILANTHROPIC PRACTICE
As a grantmaker, CJSF’s value proposition is that grassroots organizing is among the most impactful, yet the least supported, strategies for achieving social and educational justice. To this end, CJSF has played a critical role in raising awareness among donors about injustices in schooling, the role of grassroots organizing in building, winning, and sustaining a new, affirmative vision for education, and the importance of funding such efforts. In addition to catalyzing shifts in funding, CJSF seeks to model equitable philanthropic practice and what it looks like to be in community and partnership with grassroots organizations. 
 

CURATING RICH AND GENERATIVE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
CJSF has created a variety of opportunities to promote collective learning and action, building a community of practice through conferences, learning exchanges, podcast episodes, webinars, original reports, and regular e-newsletters. These efforts are designed to highlight partners’ expertise, create space for connection and synergy across groups, and equip partners with information and tools to inform their organizing praxis and campaigns for holistically safe schools. 
 

ADVOCATING FOR POLICY AND NARRATIVE CHANGE
In addition to engaging with its members and partners “internally,” CJSF plays an important public-facing role as an advocate for education justice, elevating partner campaigns and perspectives within the media, as well as in discussions on federal policy. In this role, CJSF has helped connect local and national work and bring greater attention to issues of education justice. 
 

INVESTING IN BASE-BUILDING AND POWER-BUILDING
CJSF prioritizes sustained funding and support, with a commitment to providing multi-year general operating support grants. Importantly, this funding model allows organizing groups to invest in the long-term, foundational work of base-building, leadership development, political education, and power-building beyond shorter-term campaign cycles. 
 

CATALYZING POLICY WINS
CJSF’s funding support, as well as the spaces it has created for learning and collective strategizing, have helped partners achieve policy and practice changes, particularly in school discipline and policing in schools and deepen their organization’s political education offerings and access. Many of these campaigns have been going on for years, with varying degrees of success. A number of partners were able to leverage the racial justice uprisings of 2020 and their longstanding organizing gained traction as policymakers and school officials in some places were more receptive to partner demands and calls for police-free schools that were once deemed “too radical.”