For many educators involved in school reform, "engagement"—of teachers, staff, parents, community—is just the latest buzzword for what has long been known as publicity or salesmanship—getting people "on board." But engagement, by definition (to interlock with, mesh), implies the kind of reciprocal relationship that publicity campaigns and sales pitches are impervious to. It's the difference between a canned speech and a genuine conversation. The failure to recognize and act on this distinction can have enormous consequences for schools and school systems endeavoring to restructure, and such misusage is pervasive (Wadsworth 1997).
As part of its work with school systems undertaking systemic reform, the Panasonic Foundation has developed a Framework for School System Success that includes the following component: Meaningful engagement of system constituents and the broader community. To be truly meaningful, such engagement must involve widespread participation in the development and ongoing review of the system's standards, vision, and direction.
Consider, for example, the experience of a large urban school district with an ambitious reform agenda, where several colleagues and I interviewed people throughout the system. Even before we arrived, the new superintendent had worked out a comprehensive agenda for standards-driven restructuring of the district. This agenda specifically included public engagement. To be fair, although some of what was planned was part of an immense publicity campaign, other efforts moved beyond publicity. One group of schools, for example, sponsored a week-long retreat to build parent leadership skills—from drafting an agenda to communicating with teachers to working with local elected officials. As for teacher engagement—an equally vital area of engagement (Education Commission of the States 1996a)—some teachers participated on teams that drafted districtwide learning standards or that reviewed and helped to revise those standards. But talks with teacher participants revealed a lack of ownership for the standards or for the overall reform agenda, as well as soaring frustration and sagging morale. How could that be? They had been engaged, hadn't they?
Not really. When the overall agenda is predetermined and rigidly driven forward, real engagement cannot occur, even if stakeholders help shape the substance of some components. Teachers in this system felt that the standards they helped to fashion were being imposed on them through a seriously flawed process. No one was listening to their deeper concerns, even though it was teachers who would be on the front lines, either using or ignoring the standards in their daily work.
This example illustrates a limitation of the term public engagement: It speaks to only one side of the engagement coin. Yes, the school system needs to engage its external community; but it also needs to engage its internal community—teachers and paraprofessionals, administrators and other staff, union officials, and school board members. A better term—one that encompasses the full range of stakeholders who need to be engaged in educational change and improvement efforts—might be public and professional engagement.
Principles of Engagement
- Reciprocity. Those who are engaged and those who do the engaging share mutual commitments, responsibilities, and goals (Davies 1996, p. 15). This means that districts should not initiate public engagement efforts without intending to use what they learn in ways that are truly responsive to the perspectives and priorities of the community and district personnel (Education Commission of the States 1996b).
- Proactivity. Public and professional engagement should begin before a school or school system develops a mission and strategic direction, not just after; in other words, the educators and the wider community should inform (and, as much as possible, own) the educational mission and strategic direction of the district.
- Inclusivity. To fulfill its basic purposes, public and professional engagement must give voice and roles to the diverse constituencies that make up the community and school system. Districts must demonstrate respect for all participants regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, class, or educational status, including respect for minority viewpoints (Davies 1996). This emphasis not only helps fulfill democratic objectives but also contributes to the creation of cultures of inclusivity in schools and school districts.
- Institutional continuity. Besides tapping into the wider community, public engagement also requires designing roles for ongoing participation (if not leadership) of parents and other community members in the educational enterprise.
- Centrality. Engagement of internal and external constituents is neither a finite step in a larger process nor a peripheral hoop to jump through. Rather, it is an integral and continuous dimension of creating and sustaining collaborative learning communities.
- Coalition building. Educational endeavors in any community have potential adversaries and potential allies. People and groups who are positively engaged in the planning and implementing of education-related efforts are more likely to become allies and less likely to become adversaries (Thompson 1994).
- Clear, ongoing communication. Messages capturing key education goals or priorities—in words that are simple, compelling, and free of "edubabble"—should circulate continuously through formal and informal channels of communication.
Walking the Walk
A vital starting point for meaningful engagement of stakeholders in and around a school system is the sponsoring of two-way, responsive conversations, which can assume a variety of forms (Wagner 1993). But unleashing the full power of engagement requires moving beyond the merely verbal into collaborative action. It means engaging the public and educational professionals in the work, not just the words, of educational change and improvement. To put it another way, engagement calls for not only talking the talk, but also for walking it.
Actually, both the word (or talk) and the work (or walk) stages of engagement are indispensable. One of the failings in the district described previously is that the word stage—give and take around the conceptualization of the change agenda—was omitted, which neutralized the benefits that otherwise might have come from directly involving teachers in the work of developing and refining learning standards. A more common means of falling short of the engagement potential (other than confusing it with salesmanship) happens when a district gives school system employees and members of the public a role in developing a shared vision and strategic direction, but essentially disengages them at the implementation stage.
Engagement Strategies
So, what do the engagement principles look like when put into practice? Of course, there are as many answers to this question as there are schools and school systems that have done it. The following illustration is a composite based on experiences in a number of school districts and with other organizational change efforts. It is offered as an approach with powerful potential, but certainly not as the one best way.
Janice Kumin, superintendent of the Mortondale school district, narrowly retained her job after voters replaced three school board members with Kumin opponents. She and her cabinet, in consultation with a few local business leaders, had worked out a reform agenda and partially implemented it. But then parent groups and some disgruntled teachers began vocalizing their opposition to the reforms at school board meetings, in the local press, and finally at a large public forum sponsored by the parent-teacher organization and the teachers union. Faced with the alternatives of either lying low and trying to reassure her opponents or continuing her (top-down) crusade, Kumin chose a different approach. She decided to step back and listen to, respond to, and develop alliances with a host of players outside her circle of trusted associates.
Kumin let it be known that she was laying her reform agenda aside and was prepared to work with the community, with her board, with teachers, with school administrators, and with union leaders to collectively assess the needs and priorities of Mortondale schools. The new plan was to collaboratively develop an agenda for change and improvement based on the results of a communitywide assessment of needs and priorities.
Assessing community needs and priorities. With the assistance of outside consultants, the district formed an assessment team representing families and other community members, local businesses and community-based organizations, teachers, administrators, high school students, and central office staffers. The district broadly publicized the plans to form the team and made participation voluntary.
The team was trained to conduct focus groups, and they worked together to develop questions that would be used in focus groups, interviews, and phone surveys. Over a period of five months, the team spoke with, but mostly listened to, hundreds of Mortondale citizens and employees—including recent graduates and dropouts of the Mortondale high schools.
Focus group participants were asked to identify strengths and needs in Mortondale's schools, discuss changes in society and in workplaces and the implications these changes have for what students need to know and be able to do, and identify priorities for change. Suspicions and resentments were evident at the outset of these sessions. By the end of the two hours, however, participants felt a growing sense of positive investment in school-related issues.
- Each participant is given ample opportunity to voice concerns, priorities, and vision, and this process fosters a sense of ownership.
- A common ground of understanding often emerges over the course of a two-hour session, and this common ground gives rise to recognition that the group can accomplish things collectively that previously seemed impossible (Thompson 1995).
Reporting results. The next crucial step was a report on the results from the district administration to the whole Mortondale community. Working with an outside consultant, the assessment team planned a large-scale event. The event was aimed not only at reporting back but also at engaging a critical mass of community members and school system employees in establishing a strategic direction for achieving an agreed-upon mission and set of goals. After more than a month of intensive planning, more than 900 individuals—representing employees from every level and corner of the school system, as well as parents, business and community leaders, and city officials—came together for two full days. Participants were grouped according to the district's 32 schools (with business, city, and central office representatives randomly and evenly distributed among the school groups).
Over the course of the two days, the group heard from the school board, who reported on the results of the assessment of needs and priorities; the superintendent, who briefly articulated the vision, as she perceived it, coming out of the assessment effort; the union president, who made some brief observations about the role of teachers in bringing about educational change; and a panel of local business and community leaders, who described the implications that changes in the workplace and family structure have for student success in the coming century. After each speaker or panel, the school groups had an opportunity to discuss reactions and identify one or two key questions that they then posed to the presenters.
Establishing strategic direction. In addition to an overall report on the assessment of needs and priorities, district leaders presented a draft statement of mission, vision, goals, and strategies, which was drawn from the results of the assessment process (Jacobs 1994). Much of the first day was devoted to discussions of this statement, with school groups recording deletions, additions, and other alterations. Late on the first afternoon, leaders posted these sheets on walls around the meeting space and participants voted—using green and red sticky dots—on which proposals they most strongly agreed or disagreed with.
That evening, members of the assessment team and district leaders reviewed the proposed changes, noting those with the highest number of votes. The statement was revised, retyped, and distributed to the full group at the start of the second day. Members of the assessment team discussed changes in the statement; then the full group had the opportunity to comment from the floor.
The revised statement included 18 major strategies. Toward the end of the event, tables were given $2,100 in play money—a $1,000 bill, two $500s, and a $100 bill. The superintendent pointed out that if they tried to pursue 18 strategies during the upcoming school year (this event took place in late August), they would probably achieve very little. "What are the three or four high-priority strategies for this school year?" Kumin asked. They were to make this determination as a table and vote with the play money. Participants placed their bills into whichever of 18 boxes—each labeled with one of the strategies—their group had selected. The results of that vote determined the district's short-term strategic direction. The people of Mortondale had set the course.
Before the conclusion of the meeting, people had a chance to sign up for one of the five strategy task forces that would be organized to carry the strategic change initiative forward. And the assessment team set a date to meet with district leaders to determine other follow-up steps. Kumin urged school principals to hold school-level forums and reach out to those who had not participated in the large-scale event.
Real Engagement
This scenario illustrates real engagement. A significant proportion of the people who make up the Mortondale school system and its community not only voiced perceived educational needs and priorities out of which school system goals were defined, but they also shaped the agenda for meeting those goals. Many of them—parents, community activists, business people, teachers, and administrators—signed on to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of implementation.
Participants in the large-scale event did not climb on board for someone else's reform agenda. As co-creators of that agenda, they owned it. The momentum generated in mobilizing this system and community is the momen-tum required to launch and sustain fundamental educational change.
