A Parent-Led Victory in the Fight to End Pushout in Los Angeles Schools

CADRE Parents Grassroots Organizing at Workshop
CADRE Parents Grassroots Organizing at Workshop

How South LA Parents Organized Their Way to a Landmark LAUSD Policy Victory

What This Report Is and Why It Matters

In 2007, something extraordinary happened in the second largest school district in the United States: South LA parents won. After years of grassroots organizing, door to door human rights documentation, and persistent advocacy, CADRE and its allies achieved the adoption of LAUSD’s new Discipline Foundation Policy, a sweeping reform that replaced punitive, zero tolerance approaches with the framework of School-Wide Positive Behavior Support. This report tells that story.

A Parent-Led Victory in the Fight to End Pushout in Los Angeles Schools chronicles how a South LA parent membership organization turned the lived experiences of families into the political and moral force needed to change policy for over 730,000 students. It is a testament to what becomes possible when communities are given the tools, the platform, and the organizational support to lead.

The report details how CADRE parents, starting from their personal experiences of having children suspended, removed from class, or pushed toward alternative schools, built the evidence base to prove the pushout crisis was systemic. Through three months of Saturday morning door to door canvassing, they documented the experiences of nearly 50 families. They surveyed 120 young adults who had left high school early. They created a People’s Hearing. They built alliances with other community organizations and attorney advocates. They met with school board members and the teachers’ union. They drafted policy demands. And they won.

The new Discipline Foundation Policy that CADRE helped bring about mandated that all LAUSD schools shift away from exclusionary discipline and toward proactive behavior support, teaching, and early intervention. It required parent collaboration, transparency, alternatives to suspension, and data monitoring, commitments that CADRE would continue to track and hold the District accountable to in the years that followed.

This report matters not only as a historical record but as a model for organizing. It shows that change is possible when parents are organized, informed, and committed and that community power can move even the largest institutions toward justice.

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Key Highlights

  • Chronicles CADRE’s successful campaign to win adoption of LAUSD’s Discipline Foundation Policy centered on School-Wide Positive Behavior Support
  • Documents the parent-led human rights documentation process, including door to door canvassing, family interviews, and student surveys, that built the evidence base for reform
  • Reveals that 92% of LAUSD suspensions fell on Black and Latino students, and that Black students were suspended at nearly 2.5 times their enrollment rate
  • Shows how CADRE identified key institutional practices driving pushout: classroom removals, suspension as first resort, and involuntary opportunity transfers
  • Describes CADRE’s coalition-building strategy, including alliances with LA Voice-PICO, InnerCity Struggle, Public Counsel, and the teachers’ union UTLA
  • Details the new policy’s requirements: proactive support, alternatives to suspension, parent collaboration, teacher professional development, and data accountability
  • Demonstrates that positive behavior support is a research-based, proven alternative to zero tolerance school discipline

Who This Resource Is For

  • Parents and organizers who want to understand how community power can achieve systemic policy change
  • South LA families seeking to know how the LAUSD discipline policy came to be and what parents fought for
  • Education advocates and legal partners working to hold school districts accountable to discipline reform commitments
  • Educators and school leaders interested in how grassroots advocacy shaped LAUSD’s positive behavior support framework
  • Researchers and students studying community organizing, discipline reform, and the school-to-prison pipeline

Publication Details

Title: A Parent-Led Victory in the Fight to End Pushout in Los Angeles Schools
Author: Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE)
Year: June 2007

This report is part of CADRE’s broader work to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, outlined in our Theory of Change.

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