A Special Issue of NYU Metro Center's VUE Honors the Legacy and Impact of Norm Fruchter

Posted by Pharoah Cranston on 2023-11-20

NYU Metro Center is overjoyed to present the latest issue of Voices in Urban Education (VUE). Each issue of VUE endeavors to serve as a roundtable-in-print by bringing together diverse education stakeholders with a wide range of viewpoints, including leading education writers and thinkers, as well as essential but frequently underrepresented voices in educational scholarship, such as students, parents, teachers, activists, and community members. In addition, each issue of VUE is organized around a theme and strives to provide cutting-edge analysis of a vital issue in urban public education. Formats include visual arts, articles, interviews, video and written documentaries, poetry, and autoethnographies.

The newest issue of NYU Metro Centers open-access journal, VUE, Volume 52, Issue 1, focuses on the legacy and impact of the late Norm Fruchter. For members of the education justice movement in the tri-state area, and specifically for friends and colleagues throughout NYU, the unexpected loss of Norm late last year was devastating. Norm Fruchter's career spanned decades, and included a variety of roles in and around education policy and practice. From a community organizer and a school leader, to a funder and a member of the NYC Panel for Education Policy, Norms commitment to bridging the world of education policy research and grassroots community organizing seeded and helped shape decades of work here at the NYU Metro Center.

Norm Fruchter's work as a public education advocate covered many topics and platforms. He had vast knowledge about movements for justice, schooling, and racial equity. This issue of Voices in Urban Education, titled Chasing Equity: Fighting for Equity in New York City Schools, highlights a selection of Norms writings that were initially shared through NYU Metro Centers Perspectives blog. He wrote extensively about a host of pertinent education topics, including access to higher education, non-traditional schooling, connecting to legacies of racial justice movements, community involvement in schools, school segregation, and school funding. This dynamic compendium of Norm Fruchter's articles convey not only his brilliance with the written word, but even more importantly his commitment to equity and anti-racism.

In addition to noting the vast networks of education justice organizers across the United States who stand on his broad shoulders, Norm Fruchter's continuing legacy can be found in his writings. His thirty-five (35) essays in this just released issue of VUE outline Norms belief in and evidence based calls for inclusive learning environments and equity for all, particularly for Black, Latinx, and multilingual learners, and students with disabilities. The text in this special issue of Voices in Urban Education enjoys an astounding symmetry with Norm Fruchter's career and priorities, gracefully bridging robust education policy research with stalwart community organizing. We invite you to read this exceptional edition of Voices in Urban Education not only to learn of a luminary in the education justice movement, but to expand your ideas of what can be accomplished through deep community partnerships, as well as a source of inspiration for your own campaigns for greater equity and racial justice in our schools.

This edition of VUE examines the following text:

The Enduring Fight for Justice

Depolicing Schools

An Alternative High School and A Police Chief

Refusing Schooling in the U.K. and the U.S.

I Can't Read

"I Felt Like I Never Fit in" Increasing College Access and Persistence

Recuperation and Innovation: New York City's Transfer High Schools

New York City's Small Schools

New York City's Affinity School Districts

Toward Career Apprenticeships

COVID 19, the 1918 Spanish Flu, and the City's Schools