Half of Americans say the biggest problems facing education are not about money, but about a lack of parental involvement, a lack of discipline or ineffective teachers and administrators
WELCOME
Public Agenda helps communities and the nation
solve tough problems through:
Research that illuminates people's views & values;
Engagement that gets people talking, learning from each other and working together on solutions; and
Communications that spreads the word and builds momentum for change.
By doing so, we seek to contribute to a democracy in which problem-solving triumphs over gridlock and inertia, and where public policy reflects the deliberations and values of the citizenry.
Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. You can find out more about us in our What We Do and Frequently Asked Questions pages.
The High Stakes of Stakeholder Engagement: A Plea for Careful Planning from Public Agenda
This post was written for the 20 community colleges participating in Completion by Design, a five-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aims to significantly increase completion rates for low-income students under 26. As a “National Assistance partner” for Completion by Design, Public Agenda provides direct assistance to the colleges to help them build capacity for solutions-oriented dialogue among faculty, staff and administration. Here, Public Agenda's Alison Kadlec discusses best practices for authentic internal stakeholder engagement. While the post is geared toward Completion by Design planning teams, the principles are useful for any authentic engagement process.
***You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform
Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.
Tags: 
2011 Public AgendaThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
I taught in pbulic schools from 1963 to 1989 and during that time watched as the basic skills were taught less and less. Students couldn't do fractions when studying the stock market, students couldn't write complete sentences, students could not find resourece for papers, studnets did not socialize as well, students parents did not care as much all this happend over 35 years. The Iowa country schools closed during my education history and the ones that got the first 8 years in the county school were much better in math, English and history than the "city" kids I was with. Maybe a return to small schools, small classes, regional goals, skill goals might help put education back in the spot light. Stop attempting to raise and educate college bound job seekers, educate mechanics, plumbers, pipe fiters, farm workers, mom's, dad's and allow the job market to sort out the success and failures so that the economy works smoothly. Start by eliminating the Federal governments hand in education, it is a "reserved power" under the Constitution. Allow the student to select his or her educational track, MD, lawyer, auto mechanic, housewife, school teahcer or what ever they want to try, if at first they don't s make it then go back and try again, experience is a great educator. Parents attitude, entitlement's, massive failure of teachers, at the basic skill level all seem to be a large problem. Local school authoriy is close enough to see and work these and other problems. NCLB is good for accountabiity but local accountability is even better.
Post new comment