Civic Capacity and Urban Education

In 1993, a team of political scientists launched an 11-city study of school reform, centering on the concept of civic capacity. In the field of urban education, the 11-city study found places ranging from those with low levels of civic capacity in which diffuse and scattered concerns never became focused and synergistic to those with relatively high levels of civic capacity in which key actors came together in concerted action. Community leaders develop civic capacity to respond to major community-wide problems with a high potential for controversy. An ever-present potential for conflict means that a spirit of cooperation can quickly erode, and civic capacity differs from micro versions of social capital. To be lasting, civic capacity needs an institutional foundation for interaction among elites and a “grassroots” base through which ordinary citizens are engaged.