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I thought the shocking and dispiriting story we heard in our first community conversation would likely turn out to be an outlier. A school district purposely providing misleading information about student learning. Teachers and administrators refusing to speak with parents. Retaliation against students whose parents criticized school practices. A school board ignoring requirements for community input on budgets or superintendent recruiting.
Silly me.
As part of our Unheard Voices Project at the Hoover Institution, we held nine conversations with 82 parents and community members across the country. We intentionally focused on communities with public schools that persistently performed at the bottom of their state’s distribution, choosing a wide set of different locations.
Local nonprofit agencies partnered with us to identify people with tangible stakes in how well their schools performed but who routinely do not have a seat at the table: Local employers, nonprofit service providers, local elected officials and parents agreed to participate. We got a small clue of what we would find during the set-up period when, in several places, local agencies declined to partner with us for fear of reprisals.
We found that while districts often express support for community involvement, their actions say something different. Members of every community reported ostracism and persistent refusal of school leaders to engage with local stakeholders. In seven of the nine conversations, we learned the patterns were decades old.
We heard of teachers disrespecting students because of their parents’ school experiences years earlier. Many we spoke with recognize the importance of strong education but noted that others in their communities have lost confidence in the promise of education, mainly because it hasn’t materialized for themselves or their children.
Further, the growing complexity of schooling — budgets, assessments and accountability (or the lack thereof) — has left parents without the knowledge they need for full engagement. This was mentioned as an excuse used by school leaders to dismiss overtures from the community.
Communities Want to Help Struggling Schools, but Districts Don’t Make It Easy
Despite the history, 90% of the community members we interviewed were interested in actively participating in building stronger outcomes for the students in their schools. They were motivated to be schooled in the business of schooling to become better partners in discussions and decisions.
This was not passive interest: To help improve local schools, over half of participants were willing to make a commitment of 20 hours over a six-month period. Critically, participants felt daunted by solo campaigns, but held stock in the power of collective involvement.
One might question the power of nine communities to carry the story for the nation, especially since we are not able to describe the motivations of school personnel that underlie the behavior community members described. These limitations aside, the consistent picture of long-term discounting community input and disengagement aligns with other documented experiences and anecdotes.
These findings should prompt a strong reaction from authorities at all levels of education governance. We are losing connection between a fundamental institution of our democracy and the public it is designed to serve. Regardless of their reasons, when public servants — superintendents, teachers and board members — insulate themselves from potential challenges, they drive the growing mistrust that the deck is stacked against the common citizen.
One easy remedy would be to teach community members more about the education system to enable informed participation. That could happen with online tutorials of how schools operate and are governed. Tapping AI capabilities to produce these tutorials could be a valued school project for interested students, perhaps in conjunction with civics courses.
Harder solutions would provide more durable improvement: Lean in to partnering with disconnected stakeholders. Local and state leaders are overlooking a golden opportunity to build better schools and communities in tandem. Greater affinity to a community’s school strengthens community connections for adults and students, improves life satisfaction and prompts better student results.
Perhaps the greatest lost opportunity is for state education agencies to partner directly with communities that have underperforming schools to apply top-down/bottom-up accountability for student results. The opportunity exists to equip community stakeholders with evidence of successful schools and districts like their own. New policies could prompt local school officials, community members and state representatives to undertake formal review and selection from a list of proven alternatives as part of a contract-based improvement plan. Ongoing monitoring could be shared between the state and local stakeholders.
Combining the leverage of state statute with the zeal of local interests could tap the best of both forms of power. A motivated community is a terrible thing to waste.
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