How Local Organizations Shape US Education

Studies of research, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations highlight their role in influencing local district policies and politics. This talk argues that in a decentralized system like US public education, local organizations can have national consequences as they create an invisible infrastructure to spread initiatives and practices. Using the case of high school dropout prediction data systems, the two-part talk suggests a theory of organizational change that is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but outside-in. The first part on the “local” highlights how organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City leveraged various institutional strategies to engage their respective school districts. The second part on the “national” suggests larger spatial dynamics of institutional change through inter-locally networked organizations, districts, and national agencies. The talk ends with exciting theoretical and methodological advancements in the study of organizations outside schools.

Jose Eos Trinidad is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies organizations outside schools and schools as organizations. His book Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education has been recently published by Oxford University Press: