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Reframing public education鈥檚 narrative will mean establishing what the authors call 鈥榦ngoing institutional openness鈥�

Public education is struggling with a crisis of democratic legitimacy. Americans no longer view it as theirs in the way previous generations once did, making public schools increasingly vulnerable politically.

At the local level, every negative experience posted on Facebook seems to feed a conspiratorial narrative of systemic incompetence. At the state and federal levels, expanding voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs redirect public resources to private providers. We鈥檙e living through challenging times.

This crisis doesn鈥檛 just undermine the stability of public education. It also undermines the effectiveness of our schools. When communities see schools as inept or unresponsive, they withdraw their collective wisdom, resources and energy. But every school needs community engagement to keep its educational program on track. Democratic participation isn鈥檛 ornamental 鈥� it鈥檚 how we get education right.

Addressing this crisis will take more than positive messaging. It will require reinvigorating local democracy in a manner that invites the community鈥檚 habitual involvement. To do that, district leaders will need to create participatory structures to reengage stakeholders in work that feels rewarding. As we argue, this means embracing the ideal of ongoing institutional openness 鈥� an assumption of equal partnership in educational matters that focuses on eliminating barriers to participation and proactively seeking out constituent engagement.

How We Got Here

What explains the decline of local democratic involvement in American education? Three developments, each a reasonable response to a real issue, have combined to make public participation in school governance more difficult than ever.

The first challenge is that of scale. Direct democratic practices are labor-intensive and time-consuming. The larger the district, the harder it is to meaningfully involve communities. And it hasn鈥檛 helped that the majority of attention to educational reforms over the past century has focused on the largest urban districts 鈥� the very ones for whom democratic engagement poses the greatest challenge.

The second issue is that of professionalization. American education began as an amateur affair; professionalization elevated the quality of schooling available to children and got educators appropriately compensated. The cost of this shift, however, was that the public was inadvertently squeezed out of processes that once required their input.

The third challenge is the rise of state control. Across the 20th century, states played an increasingly active role in local schools by setting standards, determining accountability protocols and levying sanctions for underperformance. Taking decisions out of school district hands gave local officials and their communities less to talk about. The local official, in turn, became less of a representative and more of a middle manager.

These are significant challenges. Yet none of them makes it impossible to operate in a genuinely democratic way. The key is to move beyond abstract ideals or ad hoc initiatives and to commit instead to what we call ongoing institutional openness 鈥� a sustained orientation toward everyday democratic practices.

Democracy鈥檚 Role

In too many cases, democracy is either an abstract ideal 鈥� something we profess belief in 鈥� or a momentary event, such as casting a ballot. Our schools, however, have historically offered communities the opportunity to practice democratic self-government as a way of life. Even here, however, democracy has come to mean little more than participating in low-turnout school board elections. We鈥檙e proposing something different: the ongoing work of institutional openness.

What is institutional openness? It goes beyond mere transparency. It means the system is open not just to view but also to active participation. And, as we envision it, this openness is ongoing. There is no mobilizing for a heightened moment. There is only the persistent labor of engagement that characterizes the operation of a district.

School districts can move toward this kind of openness by focusing on three key activities:

No. 1: Constant engagement. This includes regular communication with local communities as part of what we do in public education. Passive modes of engagement, such as school and district websites, ought to be well-maintained, easy to navigate and regularly updated. But it is even more important that active engagement meet community members where they are, taking account of communication preferences, work schedules, languages required and so on.

No. 2: Inclusive collaboration. This means involving more than PTA members and other usual suspects in regular decision making. It means planning to make the participation of all families and community members as easy as possible. And district leaders will need to keep track of who actually participates, all with an eye toward improving inclusiveness.

No. 3: Authentic responsiveness. Responsiveness does not mean wholly delegating decision making to local citizens. Professional judgment and leadership matter, and they should not be sidelined. But authentic responsiveness does mean communicating to people how their concerns have been heard and incorporated into district decisions. Allowing district priorities to be shaped by inclusive input is the first step. Communicating how that input affects decisions is a necessary final step.

This is not a to-do list. It isn鈥檛 as if you start with engagement and end with responsiveness. Instead, these components are more like three tributaries coming together in a river. They each reflect a general, democratic stance on the proper role of the public in public schools.

What It Looks Like

Districts need systems and structures, not just goodwill and strong public relations, to bring this vision to life. Below, we offer examples of things a district can do 鈥� illustrations of what the various components of a democratic ecosystem might look like. The task for districts, then, is to establish as many mechanisms of this sort as possible, such that the district鈥檚 culture shifts in a democratic and collaborative direction.

Example 1: A representative advisory council that really represents.

Most school districts have advisory committees of one kind or another, but few are genuinely representative. We propose a standing committee that performs a community liaison function 鈥� individuals whose charge is to serve as information conduits with district constituencies, help bridge gaps in understanding and build trust.

Such a council would help superintendents understand value boundaries and promote systemic alignment. Importantly, it also would prevent the public from being blindsided when the district wants to introduce expensive or potentially controversial initiatives. Councils like this might help reinforce the sense that, in a functional democracy, 鈥渢he government is us.鈥�

Example 2: Public accountability that is truly public.

School accountability is too important to be left to state officials and the limited data they can gather via spreadsheets. This is not to suggest there is no role for the state or that the measures tracked by state departments of education are unimportant. But a truly public accountability system would allow members of the local community to set educational goals and assess progress.

While schools and districts regularly ask for community input on planning priorities, we are proposing that states and districts also give a community council a voice in evaluating the progress their schools are making. Such councils already exist in Massachusetts and some localities, but they presently lack the power to issue judgments. They should have it. This would reinforce the idea that schools are truly public institutions, responsive to local voices.

Example 3: Community schools that are at the heart of community.

Active partnerships with families and communities can make schools epicenters of democratic engagement. When schools open their doors to families and community members, they draw on abundant local capacities, bringing in public wisdom and giving the public a bigger stake in the schools. These partnerships, which might give rise to new after-school clubs, provide equipment for labs or tech-ed classrooms or open doors to job shadowing or internship opportunities, stand to enrich school culture, improve educational and noncognitive outcomes and create natural pathways for shared governance.

Changing Habits

The crisis in American democracy has arrived at the doorstep of our public schools, and it鈥檚 time we face it head-on. After several decades of attempting to design our way around the labor it demands, the value pluralism it reveals and the local autonomy it requires, we have succeeded all too well in protecting schools from democratic pressures. But top-down declarations of what schools ought to do, no matter how well grounded in ostensibly neutral evidence, have come at the immeasurable cost of devaluing the participation we desperately need and suppressing the pluralism that we supposedly value.

We should not be surprised that the citizenry has come to see public schools as an inefficient and unresponsive tax burden, rather than as well-functioning and inspiring institutions of community flourishing.

The democratic practices we describe will help schools perform better. And local public schools operating in this spirit help local democracy perform better, as well. This was the original purpose of public education: not merely to develop an informed citizenry capable of self-government, but also to institutionalize the practices and the habits of self-government.

Changing our habits in this direction won鈥檛 be easy, but it is necessary. The current crisis demands this of us. The good news is that if we do it, we won鈥檛 just fend off the latest threat 鈥� we will have restored something essential about the kind of people we aspire to be. 

Derek Gottlieb is senior research director at the educational research firm School Perceptions in Slinger, Wis. Jack Schneider is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor in Education Policy and Leadership and director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.