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Community Conversations Connect Rural Areas
Community Forums Spark Discussion
Community Rallies Behind Public Schools
Community Solutions Narrow Achievement Gap
Building Support for Diversity in Schools
Community Conversations Connect Rural Areas
Massachusetts
Challenge
In rural areas, distance often separates people from their schools, government agencies, and each other. Often, time and distance prevent individuals from attending community functions and getting involved in programs or activities that's support public education.
In order to gain input about public education from individuals living in rural Massachusetts, the Mary Lyon Education Foundation (MLEF) designed a data gathering process so that volunteers could facilitate meaningful dialogue among community members in places where they naturally congregate.
Strategy
Community volunteers were organized into teams and sent out into the community for a six-week period to interview residents about their thoughts on the quality of education and the supports for youth in their communities. The one-on-one dialogues took place in everyday locations such as public libraries, post offices, playgrounds, grocery stores, even at the town dump.
We got a real slice of life by going to places where people normally talk to each other, says Susan Sylvester executive director of MLEF.
In addition to speaking with community residents one-to-one, MLEF also invited participants to post feedback through an online survey.
Results
The enthusiasm for the conversation was contagious! Everyone wanted to get involved and let their voice be heard. The ripple effect involved many more residents than expected, and the results were impressive.
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More than 1,400 residents discussed the quality of education and the supports for youth in their communities
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Community needs and assets were outlined
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Communities members and agencies brainstormed to solve immediate problems
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Development of the Nine Town Community Partnership-a partnership of agencies and business in the nine-town area, the local education fund, and the school district, and agencies outside the area
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Major issues and concerns were being addressed:
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Access to youth development opportunities
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Access to healthcare for families
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Discrimination and harassment of students by their peers
Community Forums Spark Discussion
Hamblen County, Tennessee
Challenge
In Hamblen County, Tennessee community members and local education organizations wanted to create an environment that would allow parents, teachers, administrators, and public officials to talk freely about their concerns and goals for local public schools. HC*EXCELL, a local education fund, envisioned a series of community forums that would be open to the public and spark ongoing dialogue about how to improve and support local public schools.
Strategy
In order to bring these forums to light, HC*EXCELL developed partnerships with the local chamber of commerce, Wayne State Community College, a state technology institute, the local PBS station and others to help organize and promote the forums across the 10-county area. These partners spread the word by distributing a brochure about the forums and making presentations to their various members and audiences.
Each community forum began with an advance screening of a PBS special titled, SCHOOL: The Story of American Public Education . To begin the conversation, participants were encouraged to talk about their reactions to the piece and were encouraged to voice their opinions about local education issues. The following 5 questions were also asked at each forum as a way to spark discussion:
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On a scale of 1 to 10, how important do you think public education is today?
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How should our community fund public education?
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What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of your community's school system?
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If you could change one think about your school system, what would it be?
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How could you participate in improving education in your community?
Results
Approximately 550 students, parents, business and industry representatives, senior citizens, teachers, school administrators, public officials and others participated in more than 30 forums over a period of 18 months. These conversations resulted in a report titled Building a Knowledge Community that identified community strengths and areas of concern, and identified ways the community could work together to build a strong educational and economic future.
The report was distributed to a wide range of organizations throughout the county and followed-up with a luncheon hosted by Walters State Community College and the Citizen Tribune (the local newspaper) to discuss the findings. The Citizen Tribune also published a three-part series about the engagement process and its findings.
As a result of the community conversations, several new youth development projects were developed including job shadowing opportunities for high school students, and new recreational activities offered through a partnership between the parks department and the local housing authority.
Community Rallies Behind Public Schools
Mobile County, Alabama
Challenges
Student achievement in Mobile County, Alabama needed improvement. Because all students were not achieving at high levels, the Mobile Area Education Foundation (MAEF) wanted to bring the community together and demand community-wide responsibility for higher standards and greater accountability in Mobile County public schools.
Strategy
To help energize the public and motivate people to get involved in public education, MAEF pursued an extensive school reform and community involvement effort entitled YES WE CAN. It consisted of more than 130 educators, parents, business and community leaders, students, and higher education officials coming together and creating a student-centered, community-driven plan for the Mobile County Public Schools. More than 1,400 citizens participated in community dialogue forums that were held in homes, churches or community centers to discuss the reforms needed to improve the schools.
Results
YES WE CAN has proven that the community can rally around critical public school issues and promote transformative changes in how schools are governed and led. In addition, the MAEF and the Mobile School District have launched and sustained an extensive public engagement effort leading to an adoption of a citizen-driven long range strategic plan (PASSport to Excellence) using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as the strategic framework.
To date, the district has made great progress on the five goals and nineteen performance targets in the plan.
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Student achievement has improved. As a district, students in Mobile County met AYP (average yearly progress) in all student subgroups.
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Mobile is now leading the State of Alabama in reading and mathematics.
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MAEF has helped to transform Mobile's five lowest performing schools by offering performance based pay incentives to teachers and administrators.
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More students are staying in school. The dropout rate has decreased from 16% to 7.68%.
Community Solutions Narrow Achievement Gap
Durham, NC
Challenge
For years, Durham Public Schools in North Carolina have struggled to close a 30-point difference between the reading and math scores of white and Asian students and their African-American and Latino peers. To make sure that all students achieve at high levels, the Durham Public Education Network (DPEN) facilitated community dialogue to build public responsibility and discuss community solutions for closing the gap.
Strategy
To begin the process of closing the achievement gap between white and minority students, DPEN staffers and board members knew they needed to involve the community in crafting solutions. To do this, they set out to bring community leaders together and facilitate a community-wide dialogue to build trust, agreement, and ultimately, create a community committed to improve public education for all students regardless of race.
Implementation
To begin the process, DPEN organized a conference of 70 community leaders from diverse backgrounds to examine the history of racial division in the community and begin to talk about how they can help close the achievement gap. After speaking with community leaders, DPEN hosted a public meeting during which more than 200 local residents came together to talk about community assets, challenges, and what they thought would need to happen to begin closing the achievement gap.
To ensure that everyone had a chance to be heard, the discussions were held in small groups. Fifteen racially diverse Community Participation Teams were formed, each with approximately 10 members. They met three times with a trained facilitator which helped the participants understand school data, discuss possible causes of the achievement gap, and explore actions the community might take to fix the problem.
The forums helped raise the tough issues community members may not have felt comfortable talking about outside an organized forum. Through their discussions, the teams identified five conditions that impact student achievement:
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Parental involvement and support
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High expectations for all students
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Academic and social support services
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Early childhood learning opportunities
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Teacher quality, retention, and support
In May 2001, DPEN hosted a follow-up education summit where community members created a list of action items relating to the five conditions. They ranged from individual commitments like offering to tutor struggling students to organizational investments in early childhood education.
Results
Durham residents are seeing evidence of success.
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Recent test scores in Durham Public Schools (DPS) showed improvement for African-American and Hispanic students. In 2002 alone, the achievement gap narrowed by seven points.
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More than 300 community members have signed a Covenant for Education committing them to working with local organizations and the public schools help all DPS students achieve at high levels.
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A volunteer task force is working with DPS to build community-school relationships.
Building Support for Diversity in Schools
Raleigh, North Carolina
Challenge
Community members in Raleigh, North Carolina have been struggling for decades to find the best way to manage racial desegregation in their public schools. Achieving racial and economic diversity in schools has always been a priority, and a new policy was put in place to ensure that school resources were made available to students from all economic backgrounds.
However, as the county's population grew, many new residents did not understand the history and rationale of the policy and began petitioning the school board to adopt a new policy-neighborhood schools. Many community leaders and organizations felt this would reverse all the positive gains of racial desegregation, which would form a gap between schools in high- and low-income areas.
Wake Education Partnership decided to take on the issue by build public understanding of and support for diversity in the Wake Public School system, and for policies that support diversity.
Strategy
Wake Education Partnership knew that conversations around race and diversity would be difficult at first, and recognized the need to be sensitive to differing views across the board. They decided that the best approach would be to engage the community in open, honest discussion.
Tony Habit, the former president of the partnership, had no doubt that the community would come together to make the best decision for the students. Minimize the conflict, elevate the leadership, engage in problem solving and community residents will rise to the challenge.
The partnership organized public community meetings, public television programs, and panel discussions to sort through different school policies being considered in the district. During the meetings, parents and other members of the community offered recommendations on ways to maintain diversity in the schools. Business and community leaders were also engaged to discuss the impact of diversity on the community's future workforce, crime rates, and student achievement.
Following these public conversations, Wake Education Partnership released a report, "Making Choices: Diversity, Student Assignment, and Quality in Wake's Public Schools". The report described all the policies and practices being considered by the district and explained how each policy would affect the schools. The report explained some of the unintended consequences that could result if a neighborhood school policy was put into effect. These included a greater concentration of poverty in some schools, and difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified teachers in low-income areas.
Results
At the conclusion of the district's community conversations, Wake Education Partnership asked the community to remain committed to diversity in the Wake County public schools, and the partnership initiated work with the Wake County superintendent to form a Healthy Schools Task Force to assist the community on how the best way to address the issue of diversity in schools. Today, the community remains committed to ensuring that every student has the same opportunities, regardless of race or economic status.
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