“For some folks the conversation is, ‘Those black kids in the system really don’t want to learn,’” said Sadie Flucas of Bolingbrook, Illinois.

Susan Dawson, Executive Director of the E3 Alliance in Austin, Texas, has heard some people say, “I don’t want my kid to go to school with those kids.” She added, “I’ve heard parents say the teachers have responsibility for educating my kids, not me.”

“There are all manner of achievement gaps,” said Milli Pierce of Public Education Network in Washington, D.C. “Until we get all teachers to believe all kids are capable, we’re always going to have an achievement gap.”

Facilitator David Moore said the challenge is to build communities that demand a quality education for all children. “The only way to think about this is to use ‘every’ (child) instead of thinking about ‘others,’ he said. “In places where that language shifts, it feels very different in the room.”

In order to more fully understand how public deliberation works, members of the group participated in a forum, working through the three choices outlined in the achievement gap booklet: Raise Expectations and Demand Accountability, Close the Spending Gap and Address the Root Causes. The 2-1/2 hour conversation was filled with personal stories about family expectations and experiences and revealed some tensions over racism and how much you can expect from children who’ve had few advantages. In a debriefing afterwards, however, some observers said the conversation was too polite and didn’t go deep enough.

In response, David Moore said that sometimes “politeness is a victory.” A dozen people having a civil conversation is a win when we’re asking hard questions, but beware of keeping your discussions at a surface level, he added.

Other recommendations:
• Make sure your forums highlight tensions on the issue, not conflict.
• Be aware of power dynamics; make everyone feel included.
• Use local data about the problem carefully, or you’ll open yourself to suspicion about the source.
• Moderating in pairs can help deal with inexperience and cultural differences.
• Forums should generally be small, 10-12 people.
• Use the media to reach people who might not feel they’ve got anything at stake, including the wealthy and retirees.

Participants at the meeting had a number of questions about how to convene and organize their forums, moderate, and follow up with action. Janice Lucas, who led a large achievement gap forum in Panama City, Florida in July, said she tried something different to motivate involvement.

“I said, ‘If you have been moved in some way to do something on this issue, if you’re willing to personally do something, stand up.’ Pretty much the whole room was standing at the end. I didn’t go in there with that plan.”

Other suggestions to promote action included: celebrating the project’s achievements publicly, identifying long-term champions who can carry out elements of the plan, and developing a public policy strategy.

Communities involved in the project include: San Francisco, California; Washington, D.C.; Helena, Arkansas; Bridgeport, Connecticut; New Orleans, Louisiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cincinnati, Ohio; Panama City, Florida; Bolingbrook, Illinois; Corpus Christi, Texas; and several communities in Central Texas.

As Kettering monitors their progress over the next year, two key questions will be examined: how do people in communities rename the issue known as the achievement gap? And what happens as a result of the renaming?

Kettering Program Director Carolyn Farrow-Garland said the working hypothesis is that “the renaming of this problem will be dependent on the socio-economic circumstances of the schools and the communities where forums take place. And since communities will rename the problem differently, there will be divergent views and strategies for how to address the problem.”

The next major rollout of forums will take place in Central Texas in October, when six diverse communities begin hosting conversations on the issue.