The Achievement Gap tag:online.kettering.org,2008:/issues/ag//5 2008-03-14T21:21:24Z A policy guide for citizens that describes academic performance in public schools. Movable Type 3.34 Getting Started in Community Conversations: Why Deliberation Matters tag:online.kettering.org,2008:/issues/ag//5.49 2008-03-11T11:00:00Z 2008-03-14T21:21:24Z Two Kettering associates discuss the importance of deliberative community forums in the Achievement Gap Project. Sixteen communities across the country have spent the past several months organizing and hosting conversations and forums on how to close educational achievement gaps between... Two Kettering associates discuss the importance of deliberative community forums in the Achievement Gap Project. Sixteen communities across the country have spent the past several months organizing and hosting conversations and forums on how to close educational achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged public school students. Feedback from the field has included success stories—and some uncertainty about whether these community conversations are going deep enough to reveal the underlying values and tensions surrounding the issue. In other words, how much true deliberation has taken place? As part of our ongoing series on Getting Started, two experienced Kettering Foundation associates discuss the nature of deliberation, why it’s critical to the outcomes each community wants to achieve and how moderators of community forums can ensure that it occurs. Bob Kingston has been an associate with the Kettering Foundation for 26 years. The former professor of Shakespearean literature lives on Long Island, New York. Keith Melville has been an associate with the Foundation for more than 25 years. He’s also a Professor of Public Policy and Social Science at the Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California and served as executive editor of the National Issues Forums books. Keith lives in Connecticut outside of New York City. They spoke with the editor of the Achievement Gap Project web site, Marla Crockett. ]]> Marla Crockett: All of these different communities are holding forums, and they’ve done them in various ways, tailoring them to their particular groups and their communities. In some cases deliberation has occurred, in some cases it isn’t clear and in some cases it hasn’t happened. So why does it matter that deliberation happens? Keith Melville: One answer is that there are some very real choices that face every community in the country. Deliberation matters because it’s a matter of consequence to those communities and the nation as a whole. Those decisions are made in part by ordinary people living in those communities, and thinking about education is an important part of thinking about our future. It’s that simple. Bob Kingston: These problems are not easy. If there were an easy answer, as our good friend Daniel Yankelovich used to say, they would have been solved years ago. They aren’t made any easier because several of us think we know an answer. In order to discover what will serve us all, we have to find out what each of us thinks is the goal and what are the various things that [prevent] us from reaching that goal. It’s only by talking to each other that we can begin to discover what is common about our frustration and what is common about our purpose. It is essentially the function of deliberation to understand what is shared. Marla: What are the obstacles to deliberation once you get all those people in the room? Bob: First, let me say that anything that’s an obstacle to deliberation—and I’m sure there are many of them—should be recognized as a temporary impediment, not an insurmountable obstacle. When we sit down to talk about a problem—particularly if it is a vexing problem in which we know we really do have a stake—there are just a couple of few things we’re inclined to do first. And one of them is simply gripe, just complain about how bad it is and what’s wrong about it. And in a sense, it is temporarily satisfying indeed, but it does not necessarily help us move forward. Another obstacle is, we clearly recognize that somebody else is at fault. So the next thing to anger is blame. I don’t mean people are shouting at each other, but we have a kind of feeling that someone has let our side down and isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And something else that has to be gone through is [our] notion of what needs to be done. One of the obstacles to deliberation is the personal. And one of the points of appeal about a deliberative forum is bringing people together to talk about those problems and the blame for those problems and about the opportunities they’d like to see individually. Keith: What happens in the initial phases is, it is a gripe session, it is finger pointing. And it’s not a heck of a lot more than that for a while. Typically deliberation doesn’t start until people get into the discussion and reach a certain point of saying, ‘Well, what should we do?’ Then what tends to happen is there’s kind of a deep breath and the discussion starts over or starts at a different point: what is the problem, and is there any commonality about what it is and is there anything we can do? People start to recognize that there really are some tensions between moving in this direction or that other direction and those tensions aren’t abstractions: ‘They affect me and this community, they affect my own willingness to change something I might do.’ Marla: These different communities are working with different constituencies. In some cases, you have groups reaching out to organizations they haven’t dealt with before. Then you have groups that are reaching out to constituencies they know very well or have a strong political relationship with— say, superintendents of schools. So how do you deal-- in a deliberation--with people you don’t know, versus [dealing] with people you need for your very success as an organization? Keith: You certainly need all those groups in the meeting. And you almost certainly need an initial phase in which certain kinds of people—representing the mayor or some kind of special constituency—say their pre-packaged piece, which is what they’ve been saying in many other meetings. What you try to make happen is for it to move to a point where it’s more an exchange of what people believe themselves. It’s difficult for people to come in with a preconceived sense or position. That’s politics as usual. You’re trying to do something different from that. It’s not easy to get from politics as usual to something more deliberative. Bob: That’s the real crux and a very hard one. Whenever dealing with something that’s a genuine public policy problem, then almost inevitably there are interests at stake. But what we’re talking about is something profoundly different. It’s called public deliberation—not institutional argument, debate or negotiation—but public deliberation. So in order to achieve that, everybody—despite his or her club membership—is in fact an individual who has certain values that are offended by some actions, advanced by other kinds of actions, and the intent is not to explore formal positions of institutions to which we belong, but the attitudes of mind and behavior that determine the way in which we live our different lives. And it’s by exploring those different values that we find what links us, as distinct from what divides us in the institutional level of politics. Marla: I want to go back and make sure we all understand what that word “deliberation” means. How would you define it? Keith: I would define it as attentiveness to the differences in the views, positions and approaches that people in a community have and a willingness to be informed by those differences—to listen to why people disagree about certain things. The act of deliberation includes listening to those differences and then taking some part of those differences into account, about what should be done. Bob: Our friend and colleague David Mathews [President of the Kettering Foundation] always reminds us that the word “deliberation” comes from the word meaning a set of scales, “libra,” a weighing machine. And in fact, deliberation is the weighing of different ways of thinking. One weighs what somebody feels should be done against what somebody else feels should be done and it’s this weighing of different attitudes—or of different experiences—that enables us to perceive what urges, needs, understanding or values we do actually share despite the differences we’ve got between us on this particular problem. Marla: How does a moderator ensure that deliberation actually takes place? What are some key strategies? Keith: One of the things they’d want to make sure of is that each of these different approaches and values behind it is present in that room, so at the first stage everybody sitting in that room is aware of what the differences are and why people hold those differences. Bob: It has something to do with what we refer to as ‘framing an issue.’ When in politics two parties come to a bargaining table, they come knowing that they want to bargain something, which at its best reaches a compromise on some kind of action. But that’s different from what a moderator is trying to do in a forum. The moderator is trying to encourage people to first look at various value judgments rather than bargaining chips. So we begin very often in a deliberative forum by hearing not much more than people’s stories. What they really are is people revealing why it is that this issue matters to them—why they think it’s serious enough for people to come out and talk about it. If you do that, you’re probably doing well. So, a moderator is presenting what we hope is a fair coverage of what is at stake so people can respond to certain outcomes against other outcomes that have different effects. Marla: So, can you have deliberation in just a conversation or a discussion or a focus group? Do you find deliberation in those settings? How would you distinguish between those different types of conversations? Bob: Obviously you can have deliberation in any kind of setting. I sometimes sit by myself and deliberate. But I think we’re always about public deliberation. That means we have not only identified a public issue, but have already identified an issue in which we know different kinds of people are differently affected, so deliberation is the weighing of one approach to a problem against another. It’s about alternative ways of thinking, none of them utterly persuasive perhaps, none of them to be utterly rejected perhaps, because all of them are rooted in a genuine set of human values and purposes. That’s the basis of public deliberation to me. Keith: A lot of normal exchanges are so shorthanded and particularly about some particular action: ‘What would help improve schools? We should do this or that.’ What we almost always try to do in public deliberative forums is back up the conversation so rather than going right to the actions,[we] get people to move backwards and say, ‘What is the underlying problem that needs to be addressed? And, considering other things that might be done, why do certain people favor that instead of doing this sort of thing?’ So, almost always that’s one of the defining distinctions between a deliberative conversation and the sort of exchanges that take place routinely. Marla: Some of these projects and communities are bringing in parents who really have very little experience--not only with schools and principals and their children’s teachers--but with public officials. And there has been a certain hesitancy to have these parents fully participate with people in power. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that. Keith: That’s a crucial dimension of what moderators are obliged to do, and that is the very premise of these forums—that there’s equality among people that are there. Part of the purpose of the issue book is that there doesn’t need to be people in positions of authority called ‘experts,’ ‘superintendents of education’ or whatever. The very presence of those authority figures discourages and sometimes cancels out the possibility of real deliberation. One of the things a moderator is trying to do is establish equal ground among participants so people don’t get in the position from the very beginning of saying, ‘I’m just a parent, I don’t know anything.’ Bob: One of the functions of public deliberation is to provide—as an outcome—advice that is useful to policy leaders that were not in the deliberation. Our democracy is made up of a lot of institutions, but it’s also made up of a non-institutional public. They don’t always meet together all of the time. Sometimes it’s important to have a public deliberation that doesn’t appeal to a political leader or institutional professional, but may be extremely useful subsequently to that leader or professional. So, when we organize public deliberation, it’s wonderful to say it’s open to all citizens. But we also have to recognize … [that] some subjects just aren’t going to be deliberated effectively if every group is in the room. Marla: All of these groups [in the project] have a goal of getting to action steps. That’s always the challenge once you sit down and weigh choices and feel these tensions. So, in your mind, where are you now in terms of the relationship between deliberative forums and community action? Keith: One relationship is that deliberation doesn’t inevitably lead to a clear set of actions. In a local community, I would want to write a headline that said, ‘Local Group Reaches Consensus,’ that the school superintendent should do this, rather than that. But one of things that Bob and I and our colleagues have noticed over the years is that there may or may not be that kind of discernible consensus. People will agree on certain things, they’ll understand certain things and won’t change their minds about certain things. So, it’s a subtle thing to tease out what is the movement that happened in the course of these discussions called deliberations. Bob: I think this is critically important. And hopefully, people who deliberate more and more come to understand it. And in a sense, an understanding of it makes deliberation more effective practically even though it may not seem to have a practical outcome. If the process of deliberation is going well, then what does happen is the … people in that deliberative meeting tend to grow and that means some of the … impregnable barriers have somehow dropped because they understand each other’s motives and even the base of different motives. Now, what is the relationship of deliberation to action? Obviously, in some instances if that kind of understanding is shared, the forum has produced wiser citizens, who may be much more capable of developing and organizing and defining effective action. On the other hand, it may go further than that. Because as a result of that larger understanding, they may see much more clearly an approach to a problem … a coherent approach that may lead to viable action. There is always the sense that on some topics it is so clear at the end of a forum what we want to do, some of us individually and some of us in little collectives will go forward and make sure something happens because of what we just heard in a forum. It is, as Keith said, important not to assume that if you go to a forum, you’ll have a discussion and come out and do whatever it is you all agreed on, because the truth is, you probably haven’t all agreed. Keith: One of the ways we know that better sense [of action is present] is this phrase that pops up so often in deliberation about “costs” or “tradeoffs” or “consequences.” Frequently one of the most important outcomes is not that there’s a glowing consensus, but finding a number of people who say, ‘Yes, I realize this is going to have certain costs, certain consequences, and I’m willing to accept those.’ And that’s a very real outcome that tends not to be reported normally. That kind of agreement can be very important to unlock political deadlock.]]> Getting Started: Moderator Strategies and Training tag:online.kettering.org,2008:/issues/ag//5.48 2008-01-15T21:00:00Z 2008-03-12T00:47:46Z Skillful moderating is a key to any successful forum, and as community dialogues on the achievement gap come together around the nation, organizers are grappling with two critical questions: Who will moderate? And what kind of training should we provide?... Building Civic Capacity In Bridgeport, Connecticut, for example, where Marge Hiller’s Bridgeport Public Education Fund has helped nurture community engagement for the past decade, teaching students and teachers to moderate is intrinsic to her philosophy and project. “You can’t do anything top down anymore,” Hiller said. “It has to be something that comes from the people affected…One group we haven’t had enough information from is students.” ]]> Texas Forums, an initiative of the LBJ Library in Austin, trained 120 moderators for dialogues on the achievement gap in six Central Texas communities last fall. She agrees that it’s important to nurture grassroots interest in deliberation. “I really want to build the civic capacity of a community,” she said. “We see the moderating role as another way of exercising citizenship…We wanted to have a large group of volunteers that organizations can call upon in the future.” Training to Ensure Quality In building that network, Willingham put volunteers, one third of whom were students, through five hours of training that included a forum on the achievement gap and modeling of what would actually take place in their forums. “So, when we did the introductions, we used the same introductions in the forum,” she said. “We did a personal stake, talked about the principles of moderating, the importance of being neutral. We gave them information about the project, spent time talking about different roles…We went over the forum discussion guide, and (it) had the questions moderators could use. The guide essentially was what we used for the training.” Patty Dineen, a public engagement consultant from Pennsylvania, agrees that participating in a forum is critical. So is familiarity with the material. Ideally, she said, training would last up to two days. “People like to do quick training, like two hours” she added. “And I’m thinking, ‘How can it be that people aren’t willing to spend as much time in training as it is to have a forum?’ That doesn’t bode very well.” Just as student achievement involves expectations and hard work, Dineen thinks organizers should expect certain things from moderators. “There should be homework, expecting people to take notes, think about it, try it out, and practice,” she said. “That’s probably the only way people succeed: putting in the time and doing the work.” Tim Eubanks, Lead Community Organizer for Austin Voices for Education and Youth, said it’ll help if organizers recruit the type of person most likely to succeed as a moderator: “Someone who’s capable of being self-confident…has a desire to be social and interact with others. You’d want someone who wants to get other voices to the table, someone who’s comfortable with a certain element of not knowing and with other (communications styles).” Enforcing Neutrality Eubanks helped train the 40 students who moderated in the six Central Texas communities, and he praised them for taking their jobs so seriously. It was the first moderating experience for many, and each received a stipend of $100 to do the work. But Eubanks saw one example of a student moderator who failed the neutrality test. “Someone said we need more programs like Garza’s, an innovative school that offers individualized attention, and the moderator said, ‘Let’s talk about something else, because we can’t make more schools like Garza because of outside budget realities.’ That was kind of crossing the line, taking that idea and throwing it out…I had to tell the moderator it was important not to inject personal opinions.” Marge Hiller would agree that it’s important to catch and correct misperceptions of the moderator’s role. “It’s essential that people understand they’re not participating in the conversation, they’re there to guide it.” Calling in a Professional One way to prevent problems created by inexperience is to hire a professional moderator. That’s what the coalition in San Francisco did recently as a way to kick off their project. Kelley Abraham, Public Engagement Manager for the San Francisco Education Fund, said an outside facilitator helped bring trust and focus to their meeting with a group of community-based organizations in December. One thing moderator Ayoka Turner did was re-tool the agenda to best address participants’ concerns. “We were looking at having a coalition brainstorm about a statement of purpose,” Abraham said. “Instead of doing that, we spent more time thinking about the different opportunities we could use right now that are happening in the city, and we came up with work that we might do together.” Taylor Willingham said she wouldn’t bring in a professional to moderate a public forum, but agrees they can be very helpful, especially with strategic planning. San Francisco’s big forum, to be held in January, will be moderated by their “skilled, inside people,” Kelley Abraham said. And that’s a resource many organizers in the achievement gap project are calling upon. Moving to Action In all the training strategies, however, there’s still the difficulty of getting to action steps. Patty Dineen called that the “64 million dollar question” that nobody’s cracked. Willingham said she didn’t really train her moderators to push for action; their strategies for doing that evolved over time and varied depending on the community they were in. In San Francisco, a June ’08 election on a parcel or property tax could become the focal point for change. Abraham said the people who will be attending their upcoming forum tend to be activists, so it would be natural for them to advocate for specific ballot language describing how the education money is to be spent. In Bridgeport, Marge Hiller suggested that the way you frame the achievement gap issue can naturally lead to action. “The conversation around the achievement gap (is really) how are these schools doing, and what are your aspirations for your children? We can’t use those words, ‘achievement gap’ as much as, ‘Are my kids safe? Are they going to learn? What are the biggest issues as you see them? What do you see as the solution, and how are you going to be involved?’ We tell them we want them to step up.” So, by presenting the discussion in a context that is important to communities, well-trained moderators can push the conversations toward actionable steps that help close the achievement gaps among students.]]> Achievement Gap Work: Getting Started tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.47 2007-12-07T11:00:00Z 2008-02-07T16:04:22Z This is the first in a series of stories on strategies for launching projects. Mobilizing members of a community to hold forums and develop action plans on the achievement gap is a complicated and multi-layered assignment, so organizers in three... This is the first in a series of stories on strategies for launching projects. Mobilizing members of a community to hold forums and develop action plans on the achievement gap is a complicated and multi-layered assignment, so organizers in three cities have decided that the best way to begin is by building relationships with specific stakeholders. In San Francisco, the focus is on community-based organizations that operate in the public schools. In Minneapolis, parents were enlisted first, and in Corpus Christi, Texas, conversations with school superintendents were the jumping-off point.]]> San Francisco Starts Building a Coalition to Engage the Community Three organizations in San Francisco--the San Francisco Education Fund, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, and Small Schools for Equity--and representatives from 12 other community-based groups met on December 5th to deal with what Kelley Abraham of the SFEF termed a “racial achievement gap” in the city. “We’re the top performing urban district in California,” she said, “However African-American students are doing the worst in the state.” Abraham added that Latino and Pacific Islanders are also struggling in a district that’s losing students and closing schools. They decided to make community-based organizations their starting point because of the influential role they play in the district. There are about 1200 of them, and they provide everything from teachers and health care to counseling and tutoring. Abraham wasn’t sure going in how many groups feel the urgency of the problem, but after the session led by an outside facilitator, she felt satisfied with the results. “We wanted people to be respectful to one another and to generate enough interest for people to return. As it stands, people are on board and ready to explore the building of a coalition in the city. We have a handful of participants interested in creating a steering committee.” The three partners will meet with that committee right away, Abraham said, and hand over the organization of other meetings and forums to them. She said it isn’t clear right now how or when to fold in other stakeholders, such as the teachers’ unions and district officials. Minneapolis Looks to Parents First Achieve! Minneapolis, a local education fund that sets up career and college centers for the district, has held a total of eight focus groups with area parents to get their take on the issue. Rose McGee, Parent Connections Manager for the organization, sought out parents whose children have been most affected by the problem. “What we decided to do is go to where the parents are, because they don’t come to the schools. My first focus group was held in a library in a major African-American community. The second was held at a McDonald’s restaurant in North Minneapolis.” McGee adapted the questions for the conversations from the questionnaire page of Kettering’s achievement gap discussion guide, Too Many Children Left Behind. The discussions have helped her understand where people are on the issue and communicate with parents about Achieve! Minneapolis’s own agenda: helping prepare students for secondary education. “These parents are not aware of this initiative,” she said. “They don’t know what the achievement gap is…In my Latino group, the word ‘achievement’ is not very familiar in their culture. We had to break it down in Spanish.” The community discussion may broaden in January on Martin Luther King Day when Achieve! Minneapolis holds its first forum on the achievement gap. Parents from the focus groups will be invited, but the group’s executive director, Catherine Jordan, said she wasn’t sure who else to include at the table for fear that parents would feel threatened by school and community leaders. She’s also not sure how much local information to present on the achievement gap. “Where I’ve struggled is how to frame this in a way that’s informative, truthful and motivates, but doesn’t shame or degrade,” Jordan said. “So, that’s what we’re going to work on is how to articulate these issues in a way that people can hear them.” Corpus Christi Involves School Leaders Corpus Christi, Texas has a high Hispanic population, and the lowest area of achievement for them has been in math. Instead of starting on the problem at the grassroots, Janice Sykora went straight to the top in organizing her achievement gap project. She’s the executive director of the only local education fund in her area, Citizens for Educational Excellence, Inc. After becoming involved with the Kettering effort, Sykora invited six district superintendents within the city to breakfast and pitched the idea of a forum. “They’re our stakeholders, we keep them informed. It fits in naturally with what we’re already working on.” The superintendents had a lot of questions, Sykora said, including the number of people this will require and the overall goals. She told them her hope was that people would become more aware of the issues and get more involved in their districts, even to the point of joining a committee or running for office. Several meetings later, the superintendents appear to be on board, and the forum plan has blossomed, thanks to a $10,000 grant from a local foundation. Sykora now plans to hold six forums—one in each district—beginning in the spring. She’ll be coordinating the entire effort and says her biggest challenge in getting started is “having the time to get it all done, being one person.” Ways to Broaden the Conversation Patty Dineen, a public engagement consultant with extensive forum experience, recommends that project organizers get beyond specific stakeholders as soon as possible. “I like an open invitation to people who are interested, in addition to traditional stakeholders,” she said. “I’d look for citizen activists or citizens interested in the issue or the process…Why not start with citizens and bring stakeholders and officials onboard instead of the other way around?” Thinking creatively about whose voices need to be heard is a beneficial strategy, Dineen feels. That might mean talking to people in beauty shops or cafes and inviting them to your forum. “Diversity of background and opinion is what you need,” she added. “Sometimes forums are diversified in what people look like. You can end up with diverse ethnic and racial groups, but they’re all like-minded. “In the case of this issue, people from senior centers, people of age diversity, students themselves, maybe law enforcement people, the cafeteria ladies, athletic coaches (would be good).” It’s not too late for San Francisco, Minneapolis and Corpus Christi to incorporate some of these ideas, Dineen said, but if they continue with specific stakeholders, they should also find ways to level the playing field so the first groups in don’t assume greater status. One idea: on registration sheets for subsequent meetings or forums don’t include space for a person’s position, association or other credentials. Getting to action is still a way down the road for these and other communities, but Dineen suggested all will have better forums and outcomes if moderators are trained to push for specifics. “People have a great discussion, but if (they) say we really ought to do this, raise expectations and have accountability, people are all excited about that, but nobody ever pushes them to say exactly how. How do we get specific about the expectations?” Coming soon: Moderator strategies and training ]]> Central Texas Communities Mobilize To Address Achievement Gap tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.45 2007-10-25T01:00:00Z 2008-01-15T23:42:14Z Six communities in Central Texas will hold a regional meeting in mid-November to advance their goals on closing the achievement gap following 17 forums and six weeks of struggle over how to turn dialogue into action. Round Rock, a fairly... Too Many Children Left Behind. Around 50 people turned out and worked in small groups on the three approaches included in the booklet: 1. Raise Expectations and Demand Accountability, 2. Close the spending Gap, and 3. Address the Root Causes.]]> Texas Forums, an initiative of the LBJ Library, the difficulty in getting to action results from dealing with abstract ideas, like the ones articulated by the two women. “(People say) we need to have better relations with our teachers. We had to push and say, ‘What are you going to do to make that happen?’ To help focus the discussions, Willingham said, organizers localized the Kettering guide to include area statistics and turned it into a workbook with action-oriented questions at the end of each approach. “What are the things from this approach we want to keep? What don’t we want to have happen? Did we identify any action items during our deliberation?” In training more than 100 moderators, Willingham emphasized the importance of getting to those questions. But even with the help of a script, some moderators weren’t up to the task, she said, especially in one group where a few strong personalities clashed. Still, that group wanted to keep meeting to work out their differences, and all of the groups in Round Rock agreed that more deliberative conversations around this issue need to take place. Willingham said she and others are learning some new systems for dealing with dialogue on a large scale. In their final two-hour session, for example, Round Rock participants were asked to list stakeholder actions, things that the community, region, schools and administrators and individuals could do. The groups re-combined and also took a look at the lists, which included: a volunteer pool, mentoring, sharing best practices, legislative lobbying, stronger school communication with parents and the community, school flexibility in terms of class size and length, individual networking and more forums for students and adults. On the way out, individuals could write their names and phone numbers next to items they thought they could contribute to. That information will be passed on to the school district. In addition to Round Rock, about 300 people have attended forums in Austin, the suburbs of Manor and Eanes, and the small towns of San Marcos and Bastrop. Susan Dawson, Executive Director of E3 Alliance, the regional education collaborative that started the Central Texas project, said individuals have been spurred to action. “People have signed on the dotted line in droves,” she said. “We have to work together to take action. They wanted a sustainable process for change and at least we’re on the road to achieving that.” She’s also pleased that dialogues in all six communities have been nuanced and complex, that the small groups produced cohesion, that fears going in about the process spinning out of control didn’t happen, and that superintendents have been pleased with the ideas they’ve heard. Patty Shafer, Superintendent of the San Marcos School District, floated among the discussion groups during the town’s first session and was impressed by the “lively and intense discussions.” “The principals in the district were assigned to various groups to participate,” she wrote in an email. “Some liked having school administrators as a part of the groups, but some thought that it inhibited conversations.” Shafer planned to minimize school officials’ role in subsequent forums. Taylor Willingham said teachers who participated also felt a little intimidated by the conversations going in. “I heard comments from teachers, and there was some apprehension about speaking up, so there’s still a lot of trust-building that needs to go on,” she said. “They’re in a beleaguered position right now. Teachers are feeling beaten up by all the testing.” The next test for Central Texas will come on November 15th, when delegates from each of the six communities will meet to come up with a regional action plan that will be presented to public officials in late January at a leaders’ summit. ]]> Achievement Gap Project Begins - Participants Seek Public Action on a Tough Issue tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.33 2007-10-21T11:00:00Z 2008-01-15T23:42:39Z The achievement gap in education is not widely understood, discussed or appreciated as a vital public problem, according to educators and activists who attended a strategy meeting on the issue at the Kettering Foundation in September. But Kettering will be... The achievement gap in education is not widely understood, discussed or appreciated as a vital public problem, according to educators and activists who attended a strategy meeting on the issue at the Kettering Foundation in September. But Kettering will be studying what happens in their 16 towns and cities as organizers engage members of the public in forums using the foundation’s booklet, “Too Many Children Left Behind: How Can We Close the Achievement Gap?” Getting the general public involved is crucial, everyone agreed, because right now the talk about poor and minority students’ low achievement is overwhelmingly negative. “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. Preface tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.44 2007-10-10T11:00:00Z 2007-10-10T15:13:10Z The Achievement Gap policy guide for citizens describes how the academic performance of many African American, Hispanic, and Native American students lags behind that of their Asian American and white counterparts. The problem occurs in virtually every type of school... here. Organizing a community forum may be the very first step in addressing the achievement gap for many people; for others it may be one of many steps in an ongoing process designed to improve education in their community. ]]> Notes/Reports from the September 20-21 meeting at The Kettering Foundation tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.28 2007-09-26T11:00:00Z 2008-01-31T01:09:40Z Training Material produced for the Achievement Gap Initiative (pdf) (ppt) E3 Alliance (Education Equals Economics) in Central Texas (pdf) (ppt) Report on the Superintendent's Community Forum Panama City & Bay County, FL (pdf) Texas Forums - Tag: Achievement Gap... CCG%20logo.jpg
Training Material
produced for the
Achievement Gap Initiative
(pdf) (ppt)



E3%20logo.jpg E3 Alliance (Education Equals Economics)
in Central Texas (pdf) (ppt)



Bay%20logo.jpg Report on the Superintendent's Community Forum
Panama City & Bay County, FL (pdf)





TXForums.gif
Texas Forums - Tag: Achievement Gap

]]> Current Working Group tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.41 2007-09-26T10:00:00Z 2008-01-13T02:56:00Z Kelley Abraham   Allison Allbee San Francisco Education Fund
San Francisco, CA   Interim Executive Director
Small Schools for Equity
San Francisco, CA

      Tammy Anderson   Dorothy Battle Panama City, FL
   Co-Director
Center for Access and Transition
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH       Patricia Brown   Rodolfo Careaga Program Officer
KnowledgeWorks Foundation
Cincinnati, OH   Senior Associate Policy and Programs
Public Education Network
Washington, DC       Naomi Cottoms   Connie Crockett (bio) Co-Director
Walnut Street Works
Helena, AR   Program Associate
Kettering Foundation
Dayton, OH       Marla Crockett   Susan Dawson Plano, TX   Executive Director
E3 Alliance       John Dedrick (bio)   Carolyn Farrow-Garland (bio) Director of Programs
Kettering Foundation
Dayton, OH   Program Officer
Kettering Foundation
Dayton, OH       Sandra Fewer   Sadie Flucas Director of Parent Organizing
Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth
San Francisco, CA
   Bolingbrook, IL       Myra Greenburg   Charles Hauser Over-the-Rhine Foundation
Cincinnati, OH   Chauser Consulting
New Albany, OH       Marge Hiller   Catherine Jordan Executive Director
Bridgeport Public Education Fund
Bridgeport, CT   CEO & President
Achieve! Minneapolis
Minneapolis, MN       Melanie Kadlic   Janice Lucas Senior Associate
Collaborative Communications Group
Washington, DC
   Lucas Communications, Inc.
Panama City, FL       Rose McGee   Kareem Moncree-Moffett Parent Connections Manager
Achieve! Minneapolis
Minneapolis, MN   Academic Advisor
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH       Dave Moore   Mary Olson Vice President
Collaborative Communications Group
Washington, DC
   Helena, AR       Milli Pierce   Patty Shafer Director, Member Development,
Learning & Innovation
Public Education Network
Washington, DC
   San Marcos Con. ISD
San Marcos, TX       Jeff Smith   Janice Sykora Executive Director
DC VOICE
Washington, DC   Executive Director
Citizens for Educational Excellence, Inc.
Corpus Christi, TX       Hugh Vasquez   Frank Williams Executive Director
San Francisco Education Fund
San Francisco, CA   Executive Director
New Orleans, LA       Taylor Willingham   Pat Wooley Texas Forums,
LBJ Presidential Library
Salado, TX
   Bolingbrook, IL ]]> The Issue In Brief tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.29 2007-09-25T11:00:00Z 2008-02-04T21:34:13Z An eight page summary of the twenty-six page Issue Book. English PDF Spanish PDF... English PDF AG_Issue_In_Brief_thmb.jpg Spanish PDF ]]> Publications tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.24 2007-09-25T11:00:00Z 2008-01-31T00:49:12Z Item Number, Description, and Cost (if applicable) ITEM # I-214 - Issue Book (Regular Edition) $3.90 ITEM # I-214b - Issue In Brief - (Free Download) (English PDF, Spanish PDF) ITEM # Issue Flier (One Sheet) $/# ITEM # M9962... Item Number, Description, and Cost (if applicable) ITEM # I-214 - Issue Book (Regular Edition) $3.90 ITEM # I-214b - Issue In Brief - (Free Download) (English PDF, Spanish PDF) ITEM # Issue Flier (One Sheet) $/# ITEM # M9962 - Moderator's Guide - (Free Download) (English PDF, Spanish PDF) ITEM # D18 - Video (DVD) $6.00 ITEM # V1876 - Video (VHS) $6.00 To order these issue deliberation materials please call 800-600-4060. ]]> Guide to Organizing and Moderating a Forum tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.25 2007-09-25T11:00:00Z 2008-01-31T00:50:25Z Complimentary download (English PDF, Spanish PDF)... English PDF, Spanish PDF) ]]> Questionnaire tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.32 2007-09-25T10:00:00Z 2008-02-04T21:32:48Z The eleven question, single page form for post-forum responses. English PDF... English PDF ]]> Reporting on Forums tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.31 2007-09-24T11:00:00Z 2008-01-31T01:04:02Z Guidelines for Observing and Interpreting Forum Results (pdf) Capturing Public Thinking: Authentic Reporting on Public Forums (pdf) National Issues Forums - Reports from the Forums... pdf) Capturing Public Thinking: Authentic Reporting on Public Forums (pdf) National Issues Forums - Reports from the Forums ]]> Background on the Research that produced the AG Issue Book tag:online.kettering.org,2007:/issues/ag//5.26 2007-09-20T19:31:26Z 2007-10-06T23:29:31Z General approach and methodology for the research. Examples of the instruments used. Samplings of the unrefined results. Charts, reports, etc. of the individual component research results.... General approach and methodology for the research. Examples of the instruments used. Samplings of the unrefined results. Charts, reports, etc. of the individual component research results.