As the co-director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a network founded by Saul Alinsky in 1940 that partners with faith and community-based organizations to improve local leadership and citizen-led action, the author has witnessed how power organizing can work. In the first few months of 2013, the author had been privileged to be part of a…

In 1999, the City University of New York (CUNY) abolished remedial programs in its four-year colleges and began to rely on standardized test scores as criteria both for exiting remediation and for admission to bachelor's programs. By doing that, the university has in effect eradicated its three-decade-old "open admissions" policy, argue…