New Public Agenda Guide Focuses on School Turnaround Community Relations

Download the Report

School closings and turnarounds have a tangible impact on communities where generations of children have attended the same neighborhood school and residents have a connection with the school and its teachers.  Change, if mismanaged, can add to the frustrations parents already have with schools that aren’t meeting expectations. Barriers to a successful turnaround, a new guide from Public Agenda reaffirms, affect all manner of schools – from small, rural schools to large, urban schools.

Public Agenda's guide, What's Trust Got To Do With It?, is a primer of how schools, community groups, student advocates, and parents can work together to end a school’s cycle of failure. The report offers school leaders faced with two uncomfortable choices – push through tough school reforms or bend to demands to maintain the status quo – a third path: Use parent and community engagement to create a positive, proactive plan to improve student outcomes.

What’s Trust Got To Do With It?, supported by the Joyce Foundation Education Program, draws on parents’ opinions about school turnaround; Public Agenda’s existing research on parent, student, teacher, and school administrator opinion as well as new focus groups and one-on-one interviews; and advice from communications and community engagement experts.
 

Among many suggestions, the report offers these eight ideas for effective community invovlement:

1. Lay the groundwork for productive relationships by talking with a school’s stakeholders early and often.
2. Have a vision for positive change rather than negative impact.
3. Invite the community to help shape the vision.
4. Provide information, but not too much, which can overwhelm the planning process.
5. Use stories rather than statistics to show how a turnaround school will improve lives.
6. Avoid using public hearings as the primary vehicle for community discussion. Instead, use smaller, informal discussions with key groups.
7. Enlist the help of trusted community members such as local employers and local higher education officials.
8. Listen to feedback, consider someone else’s perspective, and avoid surprise decisions.

Read more about the report, and download a PDF here.