Why our public schools are ripe for disruption

We are the ones we have been waiting for, and no one else is coming- TD Jakes.

The roadmap for change in our country was designed long ago in our system of voting that is supposed to provide everyone with a voice in the decision-making process. As it turns out, even as we’ve increased access to the voting ballot (and combatted attempts at restricting access), we’ve still never come close to full participation. Why is that? Every public institution in our country is accountable to the people, but what if the people don’t know their power? That’s what I’ve come to learn about what’s currently happening in the world of public education.

To fully understand why I stopped working for a public school district, I have to first go back to examine why I arrived. Three and a half years ago, I was on the tail end of working for one of the more progressive and innovative education organizations in the country. During my time at Teach For America, I’d spent the better part of a decade coaching teachers and developing leaders. Along the way, I was honing my own theory about what it would take to truly transform education. From my time spent teaching in a classroom, to all those years developing young leaders, I cultivated a belief that there was a missing piece to the puzzle. If I could just connect the leadership capacity building work that I’d been doing with the constituency that I felt mattered most (parents), then perhaps real change could happen.

Then along came Fulton County, a school district that was newly engaged in a model of local decision making intended (in theory) to empower parents at the local level. What an opportunity! (or so I thought). Along came this great opportunity that would allow me to test my theory of change in my local school district. As it turned out, what I learned during my tenure trying to test and implement this theory of change, is that public school districts (at least mine) weren’t ready for this kind of disruptive shared power with parents. And so I left in search of an alternative.

Any casual observer in education can tell that our system is broken. What most people don’t understand though is why it’s broken, because there are so many reasons that we could point to. We see the symptoms: a culture of compliance driven by bureaucracy, diminishing talent pipelines where we struggle to recruit and retain our best and brightest educators, disengaged students hampered by a culture of high stakes testing rather than actual learning. There are many other issues, but these were some of our biggest challenges. But where does many of this begin?

During my time in a central office, I learned that it starts with leadership, specifically elected leaders who are supposed to represent parents and students. I worked for (and currently reside in) a school district that has retained largely the same board for decades. Many board members run unopposed, and the board president herself has been in office for two and a half decades. That’s a long time essentially defending the status quo.

One could argue that this is a function of the people who elected them. Where was their electorate as an effective check and balance? As a member of that electorate, I have to agree, somewhat. We bear culpability for allowing leadership which has grown stale to continue to represent us. Even now, there is a growing movement of parents who are organizing and mobilizing to make real changes happen and that’s great news.

Yet, you also have to ask the question, what have our leaders done to truly bring parents along in the decision-making process?

It’s hard to hold someone accountable to something when you’re not sure what they’re up to.

There is very little transparency in decision making, and oftentimes because educators use “ed-speak” there is little attempt to create shared language to bridge the gap between families and schools. What incentive is there for parents to get involved in a decision-making process that seems to erect barriers by design?

Case in point, my own local school district didn’t make it any easier for parents to understand what was going on, and this makes you wonder about intentionality. There were so many “called” board meetings that I attended, scheduled mid-day (on a workweek) where important conversations were being held. Just exactly who are we expecting to attend? Certainly not parents with jobs, and particularly not parents who work hourly jobs. I’ve also attended meetings where our local school board members couldn’t really answer basic questions about what was happening and why. Instead they relied on district staff to talk at parents with boring powerpoint presentations. (Now my former colleagues can understand why I hated coming to parents with powerpoint presentations. It’s basically the language of disengagement).

It was at this point that I realized I was becoming more a part of the problem than the solution. We had a superintendent who was saying the right things about equity, leadership, and transparency- real potential game changers. Yet, our board undermined him too frequently. Inevitably, when a good idea needed to be vetted, the answer always came back to, well would the board go for that? This always felt like the wrong question to me. We should be evaluating things based off whether they’re right for students and in light of our long term vision as a district. But, we had a politically calculating board (how do you think they maintained power for so long?) that constantly needed to be placated.

By the time I left, I was convinced that change wouldn’t happen from the inside of our system, at least not for a while. Our bureaucracy wasn’t designed to handle change well. I also knew that given the political make-up of our board, the status quo has a good chance of remaining for a while. Our board is all female, 5 white women, 2 black women, with a mostly conservative voting bloc representing the silent affluent suburban Trump voter. So where will change come from then?

I believe that our system of public schools is ripe for disruption across the country. Like Amazon upended the way we forever buy books (or anything else for that matter) or how Netflix transformed the way we get our entertainment, there are disrupters working in education now ready to break through. My best bet right now is on parents as the disrupters themselves. According to the US Department of Education about 50.7 million children are currently enrolled in public schools across our country (compared to about 5.9 million in private schools). That’s a staggering amount and that’s a huge monopoly for public schools (over 90% of kids in this country)! What incentive have schools really had to change or be responsive to the needs of parents and families? Consider the power that the parents of these children represent. Now imagine, what would happen if those parents realized their collective power?

That’s what I’m currently working on right now. Everyday I get to do the work that I thought I would do from the inside of a system. It turns out, parents don’t need permission to get involved in the decision making process. They just need perspective, a few partners, and a reminder of just how powerful they are. Stay tuned.