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Reaching Out to Talk About Educational Issues:

An Interview With Public Agenda's Deborah Wadsworth

By Dennis Sparks

Journal of Staff Development, Summer 1997 (Vol. 18, No. 3)

(Editor's note: Deborah Wadsworth is executive vice president and member of the board of directors of The Public Agenda Foundation. A longer bio appears at the conclusion of this article.)

JSD: Public Agenda has done a number of studies over several years on the attitudes of various groups regarding school reform. What have you learned?

Wadsworth: We've conducted over 100 focus groups and interviewed thousands of members of the general public. We've talked with parents, community and business leaders, principals and teachers, superintendents, school board members, and students. We have found considerable consensus around the priorities that we identified in First Things First, the initial study we did in 1994. It's an agenda that calls for safe, orderly, and disciplined schools that are capable of delivering the basics to every student and basics now includes computers as well as the three R's. These features are far more important to people than curriicular reforms, heterogeneous groupings and other innovative teaching techniques to which educators are attracted. As a consequence, there is a gap between the priorities of the general public and those of educators that creates a stumbling block to reform in local communities.

JSD: In Public Agenda's study of students' attitudes, three-quarters of the teenagers surveyed said students should have to learn more and to pass tests before they could graduate.

Wadsworth: Students seem to yearn for some discipline and structure and for being held accountable. Kids were telling us in every possible way that no one was holding them accountable, not their parents, certainly not society, and not even their teachers. The study, Getting By, dramatically captured in teens' own words how easy it is to get by in school, how little one has to do to simply move from grade to grade. They are very aware of the fact that, if asked to do more, they would produce and that, if held to higher standards, they would achieve more. Very few of them believe they are working as hard as they can.

While there is virtual consensus among all groups that we studied about the need for higher standards, it's very important that we make that goal real and concrete in all the messages that we deliver to our kids each day in every single classroom. We must also make it clear that there are consequences for students regarding their achievement of standards and that they will be held accountable by their parents and others in the community.

JSD: The teenagers you surveyed said the most important variable in their learning was the teacher. Do other groups you've studied share that perception?

Wadsworth: Yes. When we asked parents in an earlier study whom they most trusted to make decisions for their kids about education, they said it was teachers. That perception creates a possibility for some strong partnerships. Kids are saying teachers are central to their success; parents are saying that they trust teachers to make good decisions. That means teachers must assume some leadership responsibilities on behalf of an agenda for higher standards. Kids will be responsive to it and parents are willing to engage in ways that will be helpful.

JSD: Professional development is obviously an important tool if teachers are to be leaders in their schools. A Public Agenda study found that, while parents support the idea of professional development for teachers, they want immediate measurable results. Unfortunately, as you know, it may not be possible for schools to give the public measurable results as quickly as it would like.

Wadsworth: The public sees students graduating without the skills they need. If the public believes in higher standards but sees kids being passed from grade to grade without having achieved these standards, they think someone must be responsible for this. They ascribe that problem to teachers' unwillingness to hold kids accountable.

The public wants results and, until they see results, they are reluctant to support more funds for education and for professional development. They are impatient, wondering why schools don't get on with it. Clearly, it does take time to achieve the kinds of changes schools are struggling to achieve. Nonetheless, parents know their children are going through school only once and they can't wait 10 years for all of this to be fixed. There is an absolute sense of urgency.

JSD: A recent Public Agenda report pointed out that, "There is a growing disconnect between the thin layer of the nation's experts, professionals, and leaders and the general public. Attempts by leaders to sell their viewpoints to a public that has not experienced the same information or debate are unlikely to succeed."

Wadsworth: The expert community may take years to arrive at some concensus regarding a particular solution. When the expert community finally does agree on a preferred solution, it seems to believe that all that is necessary is to convey that solution to the public, who will then quickly fall into line to support the experts' agenda. Ordinary citizens, however, require the same careful and difficult process of working through these issues that experts need.

Part of the problem with public engagement is that old habits die hard. Experts and educational leaders continue to conduct business as usual, to believe they know what's best for the country while paying lip service to the need for public engagement.

JSD: While the term public engagement has become part of the parlance of education, I'm not certain we that we necessarily understand what it means.

Wadsworth: Serious public engagement is a collaborative process in which individuals and groups think through issues together to arrive at solutions they can all live with. In many ways, however, it's easier to explain public engagement by saying what it is not.

Public engagement is not the art of avoiding public participation by restricting policy making to experts and leaders. It's not a sales effort to convince others to adopt a particular point of view. It's not simply the process of keeping people informed, although that is very worthwhile. It differs from public relations, which is designed to bring others around to a particular point of view.

There are a number of principles we live and die by if good public engagement is to occur. First, experts need to begin by listening with an open mind to the public's concerns as they are expressed in people's own language.

Second, experts must recognize that public engagement is an ongoing process; not a one-time activity that can be checked off your list. It requires a lot of time and patience. People need the same kind of ongoing opportunities that experts have had to understand these issues so they can get past their own resistance to sort out what's important to them and what is not.

A third principle has to do with inclusiveness. Educators often send a general invitation to the community to attend one meeting or another, which means that the usual people show up. Those are people who have a particular special interest or point of view to express. Building a constituency for education reform requires the group be much more inclusive than those who usually work with the leaders and experts.

A fourth principle requires educators to speak clearly and in a straightforward manner. The use of jargon makes it very difficult for citizens to understand what is really being discussed.

In addition, we believe providing choices is very important. The core work of public engagement is helping people grapple with their conflicting values as they weigh alternatives. They need opportunities to work through and think about the implications of these alternatives. We have misjudged the amount of time, careful thought, and true deliberation and dialogue that are required.

 

JSD: How are those opportunities provided?

Wadsworth: There is no neat model for doing this. In reality, it seems to me, lots of forces are brought to bear on a process that goes on over time. For instance, a group of people might be gathered to discuss what it really means to raise standards in the local schools. But, over time, the group reaches out further and further to bring more and more community members into this conversation, particularly those who don't show up at school board and PTA meetings. The core group will continue to find different ways of reaching out to the public so the conversation is more inclusive.

School leaders who are good at this understand that the process involves repetitive conversations, so they set up numerous opportunities for all community members to participate. The important thing is that the conversation move beyond the strident, adversarial special interest framework that typically characterizes today's discussions about education.

JSD: Given our system of school governance, does this dialogue need to occur school by school, district by district?

Wadsworth: It does, indeed. We can have lots of conversations about national and state standards, but, given the public's concerns about safety, order, and basic skills, these conversations have to take place school by school.

Public Agenda has been involved in a partnership with the Institute for Educational Leadership in helping communities develop town meetings regarding the issues of educational reform. These conversations reflect local concerns, which means this is a slow and laborious process.

JSD: The gap you describe between experts and the public also exists within the field of education. In a school or district, a group of people–typically a leadership committee–goes off to discuss the problem and generate solutions. They then expect others to implement their solutions without the same kind of deliberation.

Wadsworth: I was recently at a meeting attended by many educators. They were saying that if they could just be clearer about what they wanted, the public would get it and sign on. It quickly became clear to me that they were not even hearing each other. They seemed to lack an understanding that as individuals they might have to change some of their own views. We tend to think that it's someone else who has to change.

JSD: Why is that?

Wadsworth: We have forgotten how to talk with one another, to truly listen and respond. The disconnect we've discussed between educators and the general public, and between experts and professional educators, is nothing more than the inability to communicate in a meaningful way.

We have concocted this public engagement thing as a magic bullet to provide an easy way to get everybody marching to the same drummer. What public engagement is really about–and what education reform is dependent upon–is the kind of conversation in which people truly listen to one another, in which others' points of view are valued, and in which people try to put themselves into another's mind set.

Because we've forgotten how to listen to one another, it is difficult for us to determine at the local level those things we hold in common. The striking thing about Public Agenda's research is how much consensus there is around a very significant body of solutions. I believe that, if we can just focus on what we hold in common, we can make some real progress without having to wait years to see the results.

 

Deborah Wadsworth

Job: Executive vice president and member of the board of directors of The Public Agenda Foundation.

Education: Bachelor's degree political science, Wellesley College; master's degree in public law and government, Columbia University.

Professional history: Before joining Public Agenda in 1986, she was executive director of the Smart Family Foundation where she developed a program to attract exceptional graduates of liberal arts institutions to the profession of teaching.

Earlier, she had been a program officer for the John and Mary Markle Foundation with responsibility for projects that focused on the impact of mass communications on the political process.

For more information, contact Deborah Wadsworth, c/o Public Agenda Foundation, 6 East 39th St., New York, New York 10016-0112, 212-686-6610, 212-889-3461 (fax), e-mail paresearch@aol.com

 

 

About Public Agenda.....

The Public Agenda Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and education organization that works to help average citizens better understand critical policy issues and to help the nation's political leaders better understand the public's point of view.

The organization was founded in 1975 by public opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Public Agenda's in-depth research on how average citizens thank about policy forms the basis of

Since 1991, Public Agenda has done a number of studies on public opinion surrounding education reform, including Education Reform: The Players and the Politics (1992); Divided Within, Besieged Without (1993); First Things First (1994); Assignment Incomplete (1995); Given the Circumstances: Teachers Talk about Public Education Today (1996).

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