All for All

By Wendy D. Puriefoy

Civic involvement has driven social progress in our country since the days of the American Revolution. The first words of the U.S. Constitution are "We, the People." Citizens have banded together to abolish slavery, expand suffrage, end segregation, protect the environment, enhance economic opportunity, and accomplish other worthy social goals. In education, they have transformed schooling from a privilege granted only to a fortunate few to a right guaranteed for all.

Today, however, public education may be losing some of this sense of active community participation. When schools try to include "the public," they typically target only parents. This may have made sense in a world where most families had children in school. But it no longer fits an America where education is the top political and social concern even among the 69 percent of the population without school-age children. Nor does it match the reality of today's busy families.

We need to restore the school to its central place at the heart of communities' civic life by inviting in everyone—parents, yes, but also retirees, "empty nesters," childless couples, singles, and others who may have been excluded from school activities in the past. We need to turn these citizens' strong concern about the quality of education into powerful involvement in the schools. We need to offer them more-creative opportunities to contribute and provide them with new structures for...