Mark Warren is professor of public policy and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is a sociologist and community engaged scholar who studies and works with community, parent and youth organizing groups seeking to promote racial equity, educational justice, and community liberation. Mark is the author of six books, most recently Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Mark has co-founded several networks promoting activist scholarship, community organizing, and education justice, including the People’s Think Tank for Educational Justice and the Urban Research Based Action Network.

On this site you will be able to learn more about Mark Warren, including his teaching, scholarship, and other professional projects that he has been working on both locally and nationally. Please take a look around.

Latest News: Mark’s latest book Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline won the 2025 Grawemeyer Education Award.

In 2020, Mark was selected as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Watch the video here!

Mark’s latest book is now available!

Visit the book’s website and order here with 30% off using discount code ASFLYQ6

Mark’s new book Willful Defiance tells the story of how Black and Brown parents and students organized to dismantle the school–to–prison pipeline in their local schools and built a movement that spread across the country. It examines organizing processes in Mississippi, Los Angeles and Chicago, showing how parents and students of color changed exclusionary discipline policies that suspend and expel students of color at disproportionate rates and policing practices that lead students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The book documents the struggle to build a movement led by community groups and people most impacted by injustice rather than Washington–based professional advocates. It lifts up lessons for organizing and building movements that build the power to win policy changes to transform deep–seated and systemic racism in public schools and the broader society.

 Watch Mark on Democracy Now

Here directly from education justice activists in Mark’s book

Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out!

Parents, young people, community organizers, and educators describe how they are fighting systemic racism in schools by building a new intersectional educational justice movement. Illuminating the struggles and triumphs of the emerging educational justice movement, this anthology tells the stories of how black and brown parents, students, educators, and their allies are fighting back against systemic inequities and the mistreatment of children of color in low-income communities. It offers a social justice alternative to the corporate reform movement that seeks to privatize public education through expanding charter schools and voucher programs. To address the systemic racism in our education system and in the broader society, the contributors argue that what is needed is a movement led by those most affected by injustice–students of color and their parents–that builds alliances across sectors and with other social justice movements addressing immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Click here to visit the book’s website.

Mark’s Latest Published Article

Special Issue of Urban Education: Building the Emerging Field Of Collaborative, Community Engaged Education Research

This special issue includes a set of articles designed to advance the theory and practice of CCES in education research and related fields. CCES has emerged across a range of disciplines and research domains, relying upon different methodologies and ethical frameworks, including participatory action research, youth participatory action research, action research, community-based research, and other forms of engaged scholarship like community-based participatory research.

Mark’s Book on Community Organizing

In  A Match on Dry Grass, Mark and his colleagues argue that community organizing represents a fresh and promising approach to school reform as part of a broader agenda to build power for low-income communities and address the profound social inequalities that affect the education of children. Based on a comprehensive national study, the book presents rich and compelling case studies of prominent organizing efforts in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, San Jose, and the Mississippi Delta. The authors show how organizing groups build the participation and leadership of parents and students so they can become powerful actors in school improvement efforts. They also identify promising ways to overcome divisions and create the collaborations between educators and community residents required for deep and sustainable school reform. Identifying the key processes that create strong connections between schools and communities, Warren, Mapp, and their collaborators show how community organizing builds powerful relationships that lead to the transformational change necessary to advance educational equity and a robust democracy. Click here to visit the book’s website.