This is a report on how community stakeholders, including parents, teachers, community leaders and advocates, think about current efforts by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to "turn around" Chicago's lowest-performing schools, and their expectations for future school reform actions. It was prepared by Public Agenda, with support from the…

Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…

What happens when local school leaders sit down to talk with teachers, parents, and other members of the community about the ends and means of local education? Can people bringing different perspectives and experiences to the issue agree on top goals for their communities? Can they settle on needed changes and decide what signifies genuine…

This report builds on and extends Public Agenda's ongoing research on the attitudes of various stakeholder groups toward higher education reform. It explores the purpose and promise of more effective engagement of those stakeholders who--at first blush, at least--appear to express the deepest resistance to the productivity agenda: faculty. The…

In an effort to gauge receptiveness to Achieving the Dream, a major initiative to close achievement gaps at the nation's community colleges, the authors chose three participating colleges for an exploratory study. In each of the three communities, they conducted focus groups with relatively understudied stakeholders: full-time and adjunct faculty…