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Education Justice

Advancement Project’s work in education justice began as soon as we opened its doors in 1999. In the years that followed, Advancement Project led the efforts to understand, name, and dismantle the school to prison pipeline.

Today, we envision a future where Black, Latine, and other students of color experience a liberatory education system: one where they have self-determination, power, dignity, and freedom.  Our vision for liberatory education is rooted in a framework of moving from abolition to abundance.

We use a movement lawyering approach to support the capacity of grassroots youth and intergenerational organizing groups working on campaigns to abolish carceral approaches and structures of oppression within schools. We help them build power in their schools and communities with the aim of transforming our public schools to a system of liberatory education that offers young people an abundance of resources and care.

Notable wins: 

  • Since 2010, we have hosted ActionCamp, a youth organizing program where we have trained over 1,500 youth and parents from across the country on how to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, fight privatization, and win education justice fights.
  • In 2017, co-anchored by Alliance for Education Justice, we launched the national Police Free School campaign, supporting over 30 local youth-led campaigns to end policing in their schools and win true safety for young people.

Today, we are specifically focused on:

  • Police Free Schools

    Abolishing school policing infrastructure, with specific focus on student surveillance, abolitionist mental health supports, and youth defense to school police violence. For more info, click here.

  • Bodily Autonomy

    Centering Black girls and gender expansive young people through a framework of bodily autonomy.

  • Public Schools as a Public Good

    Defending our public schools from divestment, takeover, privatization, and closures, and moving towards community control.

  • Right to Education

    Holding our systems accountable & defending against attacks by enforcing students’ rights to education as part of organizing campaigns.

  • Liberatory Education

    Transforming our system by supporting young people’s shared vision of liberatory education.