Here at Organizer Zero, we know great organizers lead with one question: “Who are my people?” You want to understand who you are organizing, and why, because how they experience the day-to-day problems in their lives will shape the solutions you’re striving for together and the campaigns that will get you there. In this work of defining the future of education, we need partners at the table whose answer to the question, “Who are my people?” will, every time, without fail, be “Children.” Because the implied but perhaps unstated assumption beneath these questions about the future of learning is that the present state of learning is a broken system that is struggling to serve young people well. And there is only one group of adults in the ecosystem who (a) know this reality deeply and intimately, and (b) have no other incentives but serving kids, and that is parents.
During past moments of disruption and rebuilding, we have turned to stakeholders labeled as “experts” – instructional experts, technology experts, or “future of learning” experts – none of which describe the majority of parents most impacted by the failures of the system. Consequently, we have failed to benefit from parents’ leadership, insights, and expertise. So how do we make this moment different? What role can and should parents play? In our work, parents are unmatched as learning partners and advocates for student-centered change. We will focus here on their role as advocates.
Parents as Accountability Holders
While many actors in an education ecosystem are, by necessity, thinking in strategic planning cycles, legislative cycles, or school board election cycles, parents have an immediate incentive to think and plan with urgency: their own children. As Sarah Carpenter, Executive Director of the Memphis LIFT, often reminds us, “Our babies are in school now. They need change now. They deserve the best now.” When parents are informed, engaged, and activated, they move with urgency and purpose to ensure the system is working on behalf of kids.
In Midland, TX, Ebony Coleman is building a movement of parents across the city advocating for child-centered policies and learning. When a fight erupted around whether a local school should be renamed, Ebony was a lone voice in the landscape reminding the community that, school names aside, less than half of the districts’ scholars were reading on grade level, and less than 40% were on grade level for math, and that the community’s time, focus and leadership should be centered around solving that problem above all others. Parents can and should be vital leaders and partners in keeping systems accountable to children’s needs.
Parents as Boundary Pushers
Incremental change is the default setting for most systems, but incremental change will not suffice in this moment – the window for transformational change is open, wide, and sweeping.
Parents, particularly parents from communities where the education system has long underserved their children, have been pushing that window open for a long time. They have seen firsthand that outdated ways of teaching and learning are leaving their children behind, excluding them from a rapidly changing economy and set of opportunities. As we consider the big, bold ideas for what’s needed to create the conditions for the future of learning, parents can uniquely contribute to those ideas and be unassailable messengers for why incremental change is unacceptable.
In Fort Worth, TX, they are considering a big, bold change that has many folks, understandably, worried about too much disruption: a state takeover of the district. Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, Executive Director of Parent Shield Fort Worth, had this to say: “We must ask ourselves: Has the fear of a state intervention overshadowed the fear of our students continuing to receive a substandard education?” Because of her experience and that of the thousands of families she organizes, she comes at this dilemma not from a lens of needing to preserve an outdated system that no longer serves her or her community, but from a lens of what could be possible if we act now. She is uniquely qualified to make that case because her evidence is grounded in real families, real stories, and real data about the current state of education in her city. And she is fearless in doing so because she is clear-eyed about the opportunity cost of inaction: her community’s future.
Parents as a Community’s Institutional Memory
Administrators and elected officials come and go, but long after these groups have left, the community – the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, community leaders – remain, grappling with the consequences of policies that succeeded, failed, or just fell out of fashion. Activated and engaged parents can serve a vital role as a community’s institutional memory, ensuring mistakes are not repeated and promises are fulfilled.
Terana Boyd, an incredible parent leader in Cincinnati, OH, stood up at a Cincinnati Public Schools board meeting focused on setting goals and accountability metrics for the district and superintendent. The latest draft of goals moved away from disaggregating data, all but ensuring the district would have no incentive to talk about the progress of its Black and Brown learners. Terana reminded them in public comment that they had already made concrete commitments to disaggregating data, and they needed to follow through on those goals rather than setting new ones that moved the goal posts once again. Parents must be leading voices and champions for changes that will most directly impact their children.
What do parents need to play all of these roles well
So if we want families to play all these roles well – accountability holders, boundary pushers, and a community’s institutional memory – in service of a more learner-centered, future-oriented educational system, how do we ensure families are well positioned to do so?
First, families need to be brought in early. As with any group, parents are most effective in their role as advocates and agents of change when they are also contributors to the change itself. So the time to invest in parent leadership on the future of education is well before their advocacy is needed; it’s rather when they can also serve as thought partners and co-designers.
And second, families need support, training, and capacity-building. The families who have the most to gain from a fundamental reimagining of learning are also the families who keep themselves at arms-length from an educational system that has repeatedly failed their communities for generations. As the incredible movement leaders we’ve worked with and highlighted throughout this piece will attest, their greatest and most important work is to support families to see their voices do matter, their children can expect more, and they have the power to fight for that future. That requires real investment in their leadership, and training in core skills around strategy, organizing, policy and advocacy, story-telling, and resource management.
As we set a shared vision for the future of learning and ask ourselves “Who are our people?” for that system, we know we must answer clearly and unambiguously, at every turn: the learners. As we consider the coalition and tent needed to make that the answer now, in the near future, and in the distant future, we hope and believe parents can lead the way.