Beyond Public Engagement
There's a new religion in the education-reform movement these days. It's known as "public engagement." It is a faith that is hard to quarrel with because its tenets seem so self-evidently correct. Proponents assert that children's education, generally, and public education, as an institution, will improve only to the degree that the public is actively involved and demands change and improvement. Public engagement is seen as the sine qua non of education reform.
This new faith is spreading rapidly. At virtually every significant education-reform gathering I attend, the public-engagement mantra is being chanted. Followers brandish various "bibles" published by the opinion-research group Public Agenda. These studies, based on samples of several thousand Americans, purport to show how the public is "really" feeling about education and education reform. By and large, the news from Public Agenda is not promising to those of us concerned about the future of public education. (See Education Week, Oct. 12, 1994, and Oct. 18, 1995.) In reaction to that news, we conclude, understandably and appropriately, that the public needs to be more involved in public education and, in particular, more engaged in shaping the changes broadly lumped together under the banner of education reform.
I don't take issue with our need for greater public engagement in education and reform. Indeed, it would be impossible to conclude anything else when looking at the dismally low current levels of support and involvement of parents and citizens. It can also be shown, convincingly, that greater levels of parental involvement typically lead to higher levels of student achievement. Public engagement, as we have known for some time, is undeniably a good thing for education and something we all must do considerably better. However, I am concerned that our newfound enthusiasm for public engagement is often naive, overstated, and advanced with such zealotry and unquestioning faith that we do not look beyond public engagement. I also worry that leading reform groups and national foundations have been so quick to jump on this latest bandwagon that they may be abandoning longer-term but less glamorous reform strategies. Reform is a long-term endeavor requiring patience and persistence, not "seed...
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