Reality Check 2006, Issue No. 3

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ON THE AGENDA

The High Stakes of Stakeholder Engagement: A Plea for Careful Planning from Public Agenda

Alison Kadlec
Feb 1, 2012

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.

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You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform

Allison Rizzolo
Jan 24, 2012

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.

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Reality Check 2006, Issue No. 3

Is Support for Standards and Testing Fading?

Jean Johnson, Ana Maria Arumi and Amber Ott

06/20/2006

The third in our series of Reality Check reports finds that five years into the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and over a dozen years into the so-called standards movement in American education, the public now sees these reforms as "necessary, but not sufficient."

This is consistent across a number of indicators among all groups surveyed by Public Agenda – parents, students, teachers and administrators.

The percentage of parents who say lack of emphasis on basics is a very serious problem at their child's school has dropped from more than a quarter (28%) in 1994 to one in five now (20%). The percentage of parents who say low academic standards is a very serious problem in their child's school has dropped from 26% in 1994 to 15% now.

Supported by the GE Foundation, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and The Wallace Foundation.

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