As ambitious reform efforts in school districts around the United States have withered in the flames of community protest, it has become increasingly clear that education reformers and the public often have very different priorities for schools. Bridging this opinion gap poses a formidable challenge for educators who want to overhaul public schools.
According to a recent telephone survey of 1,200 Americans conducted by Public Agenda, a New York-based research organization, the public has three top priorities for schools: It wants schools to ensure safety, maintain order, and give students a solid grounding in "the basics." The survey also found that the public is highly skeptical of many innovations touted by reformers, including whole language techniques, early use of calculators, and mixed-ability grouping (see box, pp. 4–5).
Perhaps surprisingly, these survey findings were quite consistent across respondent subgroups. Except on a few predictably contentious issues, such as the content of sex education programs, responses were very similar from whites, blacks, traditional Christians, and others. There is "a real consensus" among the public about education issues, says Jean Johnson, vice president of Public Agenda and coauthor of the survey report, First Things First: What Americans Expect from the Public Schools. The public is sending "a unified message" about its concerns.
To educators who believe the schools must change dramatically, however, this unified message is unduly conservative. Why is the public so dubious of new approaches?
The public's skepticism about innovations stems from three sources, Johnson believes. The first is past experience. Educators' track record with innovations is not good, and this legacy works against reform today. "People still talk about New Math," which is widely considered a failure, she notes. Second, adults believe that educators aren't producing good results today: too many young people lack basic skills. Third, innovations differ from how adults learned, so it's hard for the public to envision how they will work.
On curriculum issues, there is "a fundamental gap" between parents and reformers, says John Immerwahr, chair of philosophy at Villanova University and a senior research fellow at Public Agenda. Members of the public think, "When I was in school, it may not have been so interesting, but at least we learned how to calculate change and write a paragraph." They perceive educators as saying, "That's old-fashioned stuff; we have better stuff now." But the new approaches seem counterintuitive (for example, the concept of "invented spelling" in whole language), and educators don't have "results" to back them up.
The public blames educators for three things, Immerwahr says: for using counterintuitive teaching methods that don't work; for claiming that social problems prevent them from producing better results; and for evading accountability. When local educators call for money to improve their schools, community members often think, "If you want to fix your school, why don't you fire Mrs. So-and-So?"
Another cause of public skepticism is the lack of direction in the reform movement. Over the past decade, dozens of education initiatives have been launched to great fanfare, says John Dornan, executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina. But all too often, "last year's panacea becomes this year's throwaway," as programs die or lose funding. Given the "dramatic and wrenching shifts in direction" the public has witnessed, "it's not wonder parents are weary—and wary—of people who claim they have this year's answer," Dornan says.
Engaging the Public
In this climate of skepticism, how should reform-minded educators respond to public opinion? According to experts, a public relations campaign to win support for educators' own agendas won't suffice. What's needed is public engagement: a much closer relationship between schools and community members than in the past, with fuller communication and more public input at all stages of reform.
School districts need to consider parent involvement "an integral part of the curriculum," says Arnold Fege, director of governmental relations for the National PTA. In the 1960s, parents handed control over to educators. Today, parent involvement is still "mostly just rhetoric," Fege asserts. "Parents are out of the decision-making loop."
It's common for school districts to plunge ahead with change efforts, with no prior discussion with the community about the need for—or goals of—change, says Tony Wagner, president of the Institute for Responsive Education and author of How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities. Across the United States, school districts are writing strategic plans or adopting innovations such as block scheduling, with no prior conversation with the community, Wagner says.
Public opposition to reform has frequently arisen in systems that are "trying to leapfrog ahead," Dornan says. Typically, an entrepreneurial superintendent has moved faster than the community was prepared to go, provoking a backlash. In these cases, educators have underestimated the importance of building trust and credibility in the public's eyes.
Many educators have "a fortress mentality," Immerwahr says; they feel battered and abused by the community—and are therefore reluctant to invite its input. But educators should not respond by "circling the wagons." They "need to be dialoguing with the community," he believes.
Educators need to enlist the broader public in discussions about school reform, agrees Robert Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, which promotes school improvement in Kentucky. Such discussions may be "grinding and time-consuming," Sexton concedes, but by holding them, educators treat the public with proper respect.
Educators must be extremely clear about their intentions, "dumping all the jargon," Sexton advises. And they must avoid the "we-know-best attitude" that alienates parents. Ideally, dialogue should be face-to-face, on the turf of parents and citizens. (School board meetings often produce bad vibrations, Sexton says.)
Because the average parent is very concerned about the basics, educators must explain how their reforms address the teaching of basic skills—as well as other parent priorities, Sexton says. "This shouldn't be hard to do, because educators share the same concerns with parents."
Teachers play a critical role in winning or losing parent support, Sexton notes. Teachers who are uncomfortable with new approaches can send frightening messages to parents. There are "huge differences in parents' attitudes depending on what they hear from teachers."
Education reformers should teach both faculty members and the community a great deal about any initiative, Dornan says. Make sure it doesn't sound like a radical experiment, he advises. "Go overboard to make it understandable to Joe Average." Reformers also need to anticipate fault lines, Dornan says. They must avoid "tripping hot wires" before they have had a chance to get their message across.
Wagner advocates using focus groups as a "community involvement tool." Focus groups composed of students, parents, and teachers can elicit a broad representation of opinions about school change, he says. And because they allow communities to discuss problems before educators impose particular solutions, focus groups can yield a much broader consensus about the need for change and inspire more willingness to get involved.
Before laying any plans, educators should talk with the public, at focus forums or town meetings, to learn what the public holds them accountable for, says Craig Berkowitch, public engagement specialist for the National Alliance for Restructuring Education. Then educators must involve parents, business-people, and other community members in the development of reforms. Reformers "need to include the public every step of the way," he emphasizes.
"School communities need to think politically," Berkowitch says. They should ask, "Who has the power in town?" and then find ways to enlist the support of those groups. Some educators in communities where senior citizens make up a large voting bloc, for example, make "concerted efforts" to reach that constituency. They visit retirement communities and ask senior citizens to share their past work experiences with students and to volunteer in classrooms in other ways. By initiating this kind of participation, educators can "break down a lot of misperceptions about what is happening in those schools."
When the Public Is Wrong
Working closely with the public does not guarantee a meeting of the minds, of course. When education experts believe the public is misguided in its beliefs, they must decide whether to exert leadership, Johnson says.
If educators decide to defend innovations in the face of public opposition, "a one-time publicity campaign is not going to work," Johnson says. Nor will appeals to research findings. Members of the public are "not all that impressed by research," such as data supporting heterogeneous grouping, she says.
For the public, seeing is believing. "People need to see [a new approach] working in their local schools, perhaps on a small scale," Johnson says. They will be swayed only by "slow proof" that it produces the results educators say it does. "The public is really in a `show-me' mood."
Sexton agrees. What wins parents over, he says, are demonstrations that their children are producing high-quality work—proof that students are learning both to write fluently and to spell, for example. "Parents can understand a good product if they see it," he asserts. The challenge for educators is to get parents in the schoolhouse door to see for themselves.
Educators ignore parents' perceptions at their own peril—even if they think parents are misguided, Dornan says. In his own state, North Carolina, concerns about violence in schools have ranked high in parent surveys, although the state is "not a hotbed for school violence problems." In reading such survey findings, "I've always rolled my eyes and shaken my head," Dornan admits. But dismissing parents' concerns about violence would be a mistake. "There's a real alarm bell there," he says. "Whether it's well-founded or not is irrelevant." In many ways, the public's perception is reality—and educators must address it.
This is "a pivotal time" for public education, Johnson believes. The schools will be in jeopardy if educators don't heed the public's concerns and, where appropriate, accommodate them. "Rebuilding public trust in schools is essential," she says. "It's hard to [maintain] a public institution that people have such doubts about." Fortunately, Johnson points out, the public is not questioning the value of public education—only its performance.
Resources
Resources
What's New in School, a videotape series designed to introduce parents to cooperative learning, curriculum integration, and performance assessment, includes four videotapes, presentation guidelines, and parent handouts. Price to ASCD members is $135. Stock No. 4-94178. For more information, contact ASCD's Order Processing Department at (703) 549-9110.
For a Guide to Parent Involvement Resources, write the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education at Box 39, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.
To obtain copies of First Things First, contact Public Agenda, 6 E. 39th St., Ste. 900, New York, NY 10016; Tel.: (212) 686-6610; Fax: (212) 889-3461. Price: $10 each, plus $1.50 for shipping and handling.
OBE: A Case in Point
Pursuing reforms without enlisting public support can result in a fierce backlash, experts warn. Outcome-based education (OBE) is a case in point.
The Public Agenda survey report, First Things First, shows that public approves the "core concept" of OBE: 82 percent of Americans say that "setting up very clear guidelines on what kids should learn and teachers should teach in every major subject" would help improve academic achievement. Yet public reaction to OBE per se is extremely negative, says Jean Johnson, coauthor of the report. She ascribes this repulsion to "the way reform has filtered down in the local community."
Johnson identifies two main problems with the way OBE was introduced to the public. First, the acronym itself, while a useful shorthand for educators, was "meaningless" to most people, who could therefore project any meaning onto it. Second, in many parents' eyes, OBE was a whole program of reforms, including new grading systems and innovations such as heterogeneous grouping. "It came as a package," Johnson says, and people weren't convinced it was better than the status quo. OBE didn't make intuitive sense to them.
According to First Things First, "comments in focus groups suggest that the concept of setting clear goals for learning can be undermined by the shock of the new—new jargon, new kinds of report cards, new kinds of assignments—unless they are very well explained and crystal clear in their responsiveness to the public's concerns about basics." Where OBE has been forcefully rejected, that kind of lucid explanation has been lacking.
Among places where OBE is working, there is a common denominator, says John Dornan, executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, who has worked closely with counties piloting OBE programs: Educators have devoted "an amazing amount of time to bringing the public along."
Where OBE has flourished, educators have worked hard to ensure that their initiative is seen as "a home-grown program," Dornan notes. They have moved forward slowly, making sure first that "the educational family is in sync"—that teachers are not opposed and poisoning the minds of parents—and then ensuring that parents have faith in the new approaches.
Moreover, "a handful of systems exercised a lot of red-pencil editing on their semantics," Dornan reports. The message they sent to parents emphasized their intention to build a solid foundation in the basics and did not sound "New Age." Some educators even abandoned use of the red-flag words "outcome-based education." These changes allayed parents' fears, yet did not undermine the integrity of the initiatives, Dornan says.
Dan Safran, director of the Center for the Study of Parent Involvement, admits that the backlash against OBE initially puzzled him. Why, he wondered, did people reject a commonsense process that every business and government should be following? On investigation, he found that OBE had become the target for "irrational anger and upset," which he thinks could have been averted by more up-front collaboration with the public.
But Safran believes educators should not place the blame for scuttled reforms on the public. Professionals are there to provide a service, he says. Educators "should relish the opportunity to educate people" about new approaches to schooling.
What the Public Wants
Safety and Order. First and foremost, the public wants schools that are safe, and orderly enough to allow serious learning to take place. The survey found that 72 percent of Americans believe drugs and violence are a serious problem in their own community's schools, while 54 percent say teachers are doing only a "fair" or "poor" job dealing with discipline."It seems axiomatic to people that schools should be safe, orderly, and conducive to teaching and learning. But Americans in all parts of the country and across every demographic category say their local public schools are not providing this basic underpinning for sound education," First Things First states.Although safety and order rank at the top of the public's agenda, "education experts, government, local school districts, and the array of foundations and `think tanks' working on reform have emphasized this goal less than [some] others," the report observes.
Back to Basics. According to First Things First, 60 percent of Americans say that "not enough emphasis on the basics, such as reading, writing, and math" is a serious problem in their local schools. In focus groups, people criticize "the inability of the public schools to make mastery of the basics commonplace among the nation's children."The public's focus on the basics "is born, in part, out of frustration," says Jean Johnson, coauthor of the report. In their families and in the workplace, adults are encountering too many young people who lack basic skills—teenagers who can't write a grammatical sentence or calculate square footage, for example. The public considers teaching the basics "a minimal requirement" that must be met before schools attempt more ambitious goals. Therefore, it believes "schools need to batten down the hatches and concentrate on the English language and math," Johnson says.Education reformers, however, appear to have other priorities. "To many Americans, `education experts' seem to give surprisingly short shrift to basics—skipping over them to discuss issues such as the importance of `critical thinking skills,' the need to learn teamwork, and other `higher-order' skills that are at the top of reformers' agendas," the report states.
Higher Standards. The public "overwhelmingly" endorses measures designed to set and enforce higher standards. For example, 88 percent of Americans support requiring students to demonstrate they can speak and write English well before being graduated from high school. Seventy percent want to require students to pass a test showing they are ready to move from elementary school to junior high school.The public also rejects the concept of social promotion: 81 percent of Americans say schools should pass only those students who have learned what was expected. Moreover, 76 percent say teachers should "toughen their grading and be more willing to fail high school students who don't learn."
Traditional Teaching. The public and reformers are greatly at odds concerning new approaches to teaching. The public is extremely wary of some innovations vigorously promoted by reformers. "Ideas such as using calculators to teach math, teaching composition without teaching spelling, and grouping students with different skills together in one class don't make intuitive sense to most Americans," First Things First reports.Innovative techniques are welcomed in medicine but not necessarily in education, Johnson says. "People have more faith in traditional teaching than in innovations."For example, the public does not endorse the early use of calculators: 86 percent of Americans say students should memorize the multiplication tables and learn to do arithmetic "by hand" before using calculators. Most professional math educators, by contrast, believe that students who use calculators from the start come to understand math concepts "better than those who spend a lot of time memorizing tables and doing math by hand," according to a 1993 Public Agenda study.
The public also frowns upon whole language techniques, which have swept the language arts field. "Sixty percent of Americans reject the educational strategy that encourages children to write creatively and express themselves from the beginning, without much attention to spelling and grammar," the report states. "Instead, most people endorse the idea that, `unless [children] are taught the rules from the beginning, they will never be good writers.'"
The public has a tendency to think of learning as sequential, Johnson says; people believe that students must get the basics down cold before they can proceed to higher-order learning. Whole language theory, which posits that students should learn grammar and spelling while they are writing and reading literature, flies in the face of this widespread belief.
Mixed-ability grouping—a dearly-held goal of many educators and reformers—also lacks a public mandate. "Only 34 percent of Americans think that mixing students of different achievement levels together in classes ... will help increase student learning," First Things First states. The report speculates that mixed-ability grouping lacks appeal because the public believes average students are neglected when the teacher is "distracted trying to deal with the youngsters at the extremes."
Members of the public "like tradition, but they don't want to go back to the 19th century," Johnson says. They want students to be treated humanely, for example; only 28 percent endorse corporal punishment. And they want a curriculum relevant to the 20th century. The public highly supports "teaching that having friends from different racial backgrounds and living in integrated neighborhoods is good," "stressing that girls can succeed at anything boys can," and "studying the struggle for black civil rights," for example.
