Centering Human Rights Through Parent Power: A Training Manual for Organizers (2007)

How South LA Parents Claimed Education as a Human Right—and Built the Skills to Demand Accountability

What This Report Is and Why It Matters

Before policy wins. Before board votes. Before headlines about discipline reform. There was parent education.

Centering Human Rights Through Parent Power documents a foundational moment in CADRE’s history: the development and use of a human rights–based parent training manual designed to equip South Los Angeles parents with the knowledge, language, and tools to advocate for their children inside a system that routinely excluded them.

Created in 2007 by CADRE in partnership with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), this training manual reframes public education—not as a privilege to be earned or revoked—but as a fundamental human right. At a time when Black and Latino students were being pushed out of classrooms through suspensions, transfers, and informal removals, this manual helped parents understand that these practices were not just unfair—they were violations of dignity, equity, and basic rights.

Crucially, this work centers parents as experts. It recognizes that families already understand what is happening to their children—and deserve the political education and organizing tools to name harms, analyze systems, and demand change collectively. The manual became a cornerstone of CADRE’s leadership development, laying the groundwork for later victories in school discipline reform and parent power.

This is explicitly parent-led political education. It reflects CADRE’s belief that sustainable change does not begin with institutions—it begins with informed, organized communities who understand their rights and refuse to be treated as outsiders in their own schools.

Key Highlights

• Education as a human right: Grounds public education in international human rights principles, not punishment or compliance.
• Parent-centered training: Designed for parents to lead, teach, and organize—not just receive information.
• Connection to lived experience: Links abstract rights frameworks to real discipline practices affecting South LA children.
• Power-building focus: Emphasizes collective action, leadership development, and community accountability.
• Racial justice lens: Names how race, class, and systemic bias shape discipline outcomes and access to education.
• Participatory learning model: Encourages dialogue, reflection, and shared analysis rather than top-down instruction.
• Foundation for reform: Helped seed later campaigns challenging pushout, exclusionary discipline, and parent exclusion.
• Movement-aligned: Situates school struggles within broader fights for dignity, equity, and social rights.

Who This Resource Is For

• Parents and caregivers seeking to understand and assert their rights
• South LA families impacted by school discipline and exclusion
• Parent leaders and facilitators leading workshops or trainings
• Organizers and community educators building grassroots power
• Advocates and legal partners working at the intersection of education and human rights
• Students and researchers studying participatory organizing and rights-based frameworks

Publication Details

Title: CADRE–NESRI Human Rights Parent Training Manual
Authors: Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE); National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)
Year: 2007