Strong Communications and Public Engagement Key to Effective Education Reform

 By Marni Futterman, Vice President, Chicago

For the countless Americans interested in revitalizing our nation’s public schools, the current back-to-school season certainly is heralding an exciting time.

In Chicago where I reside, our new Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has made public education a top priority, and his new schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard, will begin their first school year leading the nation’s third-largest school system when students return on September 6.

In a May 3 article by the Chicago News Cooperative shortly after he was named head of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Jean-Claude Brizard spoke about his goals for CPS, including “raising graduation and literacy rates, improving communication with parents and teachers, and enforcing accountability of principals.” He also emphasized the importance of “send(ing) the right message to the community.”

I commend Brizard for acknowledging the central role effective communications and public engagement plays in improving our public schools. Too often, in light of the myriad financial and political challenges they face, education leaders neglect inadvertently the critical task of fostering an open dialogue with parents, teachers, principals, union, business and community leaders, and the community at large.

But what’s the best way to go about communicating these complex issues to diverse audiences? In my experience counseling districts around the country about education communications, it’s important to work from the inside out. From a communications perspective, the first task of a new district leader must be to build a rapport with current teachers, principals, parents and union leaders. One of the best ways to do this is through asking for their input and truly listening to their thoughts and opinions about both challenges and possible solutions. The next step is reporting back to them on what was learned from these conversations, both the positive and the negative, and sharing how their opinions and ideas will be incorporated into the district’s action plan moving forward.

It’s also critical to engage business and community leaders in the dialogue about how to improve our schools. By creating opportunities for them to get involved, through ongoing volunteer leadership roles as well as forums and events, education leaders can garner much-needed financial support and creative ideas from those with experience in other disciplines.

Finally, it’s important to make the broader community aware of what’s happening within our schools. One way to do this is through local and national events that inform and engage the public around specific education issues. Traditional and social media also serve as critical conduits for telling education stories to the community. Too often, media coverage of our schools focuses on the controversial and confrontational. What’s needed is a much more intensive – and effective -- communications drive to illuminate and celebrate the student-achievement programs that succeed. State and district leaders can do this by highlighting to the media the data that illustrates initiatives that are working, as well as by leveraging the voices of teachers and principals in the classroom to share their personal success stories. In addition, it’s important that school systems tell their own story effectively through their websites and the social media channels where their constituents are already engaged.

This collaborative approach to communications can go a long way toward building a school system and community with a shared commitment to and concrete plan for transforming our schools and providing our children with a high-quality education.