Executive Director's Column: Community engagement is essential

By Anne L. Bryant

2/19/02 – We've been seeing in the press lately much discussion about mayors, governors, and city councils planning to "take over" school districts and what this could mean for the role of the school board.

It doesn't seem to matter that research proves these kinds of takeovers have not had much of an impact on student achievement. In many cases, an elected board is replaced with an appointed board. Sometimes an appointed board is replaced with an elected board. The "who is in charge" question replaces the much more important question of "what are they in charge of," which addresses the board's main mission–raising student achievement.

The blame game between superintendents and boards is aired publicly, and the press loves to feed the frenzy, while often neglecting the real issues.

For example, in Philadelphia, as was pointed out on numerous occasions by former Superintendent David Hornbeck, the press tends to focus on the relationship between the board and the superintendent, rather than looking at the real issue, which in this case is inadequate funding for public schools. It seems to be easier to blame an elected group of citizens rather than the governor, state legislators, superintendent, teachers, or principals.

The public is not only confused, but people become alienated from the schools because of the perceived bickering and noise. They do not feel that they are part of the school district's mission and vision.

That's why school boards, increasingly, must seek ways to re-engage the public.

In the past, we have mistakenly viewed public engagement as merely inviting members of the public to speak at a school board meeting. That's certainly a way to hear from community members on specific issues. And I am certainly not advocating cessation of that practice.

But that is really just a process for hearing input. It's not truly a conversation about the education of our children. It is not public engagement.

NSBA firmly believes that community engagement must be deeper and richer than one person speaking at a school board meeting. True community engagement enables board members to listen to what community residents have to say about public education–about their hopes and dreams for their schools.

There are many wonderful resources to help school boards engage the public, including two guidebooks published by NSBA: The Community Connection and Communities Count.

One of the 15 wonderful case studies in Communities Count describes the shared decision-making model adopted by Anderson School District One in South Carolina.

The district uses stakeholder teams–including business representatives, parents, students, educators, and board members–to help develop curricula, modify schedules, develop promotion and retention guidelines, and work on many other areas. This system has helped build community trust and create an atmosphere of support and stability.

Another case study describes how the Houston Independent School District engaged business leaders and other community members in a systemwide decentralization effort. The district's Peer Examination, Evaluation, and Review process brings experts from the community, businesses, and organizations to work with district staff on specific issues or problems.

Increasingly, our state school boards associations are getting involved in helping local boards engage the public. One recent example is the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, which organized 23 simultaneous town hall meetings across the state to engage the public in a dialogue with school board members, educators, and state legislators on solutions to the high cost of health insurance for school employees.

And now NSBA is undertaking a new community engagement initiative to work with state associations to gauge what student achievement really means to the public.

This new "What Counts" initiative is based on the premise that it is time to expand the education reform debate beyond test scores. Statewide assessments are important for measuring whether students are meeting state standards. But we believe that test scores ought to be combined with other indicators to give parents, educators, and policymakers a more complete picture of student achievement and school quality.

"What Counts" has two goals: to help local communities discuss which indicators, in addition to test scores, should be used to measure school quality and to help state and local policymakers develop more sensible accountability policies.

This will be accomplished through a community engagement model that will be developed by NSBA and five state school boards associations. During the coming 12 months, we'll be working to create four or five community forums in each of these states.

Increasingly, public opinion research shows waning support for using a single test to measure whether a child should be promoted to the next grade or graduate from high school. A single test score cannot measure the entire worth of a child, a teacher, a classroom, or a school district.

When the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program results were released last week, some of the highest-achieving schools showed a drop in test scores. School officials questioned the validity of some of the scoring.

But the bottom line is, if you ask people what they value in public education, most people put state tests way down on the list. What they are most concerned about are higher levels of learning, safety and security, and the building of good civic virtue.

What the "What Counts" program is really all about is a community engagement process focused on having the public understand the broader indicators of student achievement.

Community engagement is terribly important if we want the public to understand and respect the work of school boards and be aware of not only the good job public schools are doing, but the many areas in which we face major challenges.

If we rely on newspaper stories–which tend to exaggerate character differences among school board members and the superintendent–the public is not going to truly understand the role of the school board in public education. And that is not going to get the public involved in working for better public schools.

No one else is going to do this, so it's got to be up to school boards, which by their very nature, are of the community.