WORKING TOGETHER
Harnessing Community Resources
to Improve Middle Schools


THREE COMMUNITY COALITIONS

Jackson, Mississippi: Council on Reform and Excellence

Working together for excellence and equity


Jackson's public schools have had a turbulent history over the years since 1963, when the Mississippi legislature threatened to close the schools rather than desegregate. Race was the explicit topic of that struggle, but according to Winifred Green, president of a local community-based organization, it remains implicit in any discussion of school reform. "Race pervades everything we talk about," she says, "but after we've answered the access questions, we need to ask, >How do we achieve excellence and equity in education?' Citizen participation isn't the answer to that question, but it is essential to finding the answer."

In 1994, Green's organization--the Southern Coalition for Educational Equity--joined with the Jackson school system to establish the Council on Reform and Excellence, a community coalition to improve middle school education. H. Ann Jones, a community leader, businesswoman, and member of the local school board, was also interested in the idea. And the time was right. Jackson had a new and dynamic superintendent, Ben Canada, who had begun to restructure the system to create middle schools, rather than traditional junior highs. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation had been supporting a process of middle school reform in Jackson for several years, and people inside the schools felt it was time to share their message with the wider community.

The Council on Reform and Excellence met for the first time in May 1994. From the start, the members of the council saw that educating themselves--and the Jackson community--about middle schools would be a primary goal. Sandy McCall, a council member and past president of Mississippi's statewide PTA, recalls those early days: "We got started at a time when parents were absolutely petrified that their babies, 6th graders, were being moved from elementary schools into middle schools. The school district provided some meetings to discuss this change, but not enough, because parents were still frightened. The council helped show them that the concern and knowledge were really there--that the schools were going to make it all right for their children."

Since then, many of the group's activities have focused on expanding everyone's working knowledge of what defines an effective middle school, looking both inside their own local system and outside for new ideas. The result has been a council able to advocate steadily for educational improvements, while also weighing in as needed to help resolve crises.

One early crisis was the departure of Ben Canada, who left the Jackson schools to become superintendent in Atlanta. Members of the council took an active role in selecting a new superintendent, then remained involved through his subsequent departure and the appointment of an interim superintendent. When discipline problems prompted Canada's successor to advocate corporal punishment of students, council members responded with an infusion of knowledge: they invited speakers from the Tupelo schools to explain their system's innovative discipline program, involving police officers and parents. The council then engaged the superintendent--who attended the session--in an informed discussion of alternative solutions.

Learning has also been the theme of the council's successful community forums, which feature demonstrations (complete with students) by the city's best middle school teachers and presentations by nationally prominent educators. "We hold the forum in the spring, when incoming parents are really concerned about their children moving up to middle school," explains Roxane Moncure, a nurse, student, and parent of two middle school children. The event draws hundreds of parents, teachers, students, professional and business leaders--and anyone else with an interest in seeing what first-class middle school teaching is all about--and ends with a community catfish supper. Another council effort offered a competition for teachers, who were asked to say how they would benefit as educators from attending the National Middle School Association Conference; the winner attended the conference with all expenses paid.

The council itself is made up of people from Jackson's professional and business communities, along with parents and educators. Its members get together frequently for short but fast-paced meetings. "If you want the big boys to participate, you have to meet early in the morning," says Winifred Green. "We meet in the conference room of one of our members. We start at 7:30, and we're through by 9:00. We can't have a midday meeting, although that's what the school people are used to." The council's office is based at the Southern Coalition for Educational Equity, which has continued to provide staff support after completion of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation grant. Additional resources--space, materials, volunteers--have come as needed from businesses or the school system.

Today, the council can point to several accomplishments, some more concrete than others. Perhaps most important is a new awareness of the special mission of middle schools, an awareness that has spread beyond educators and parents to a constituency that includes some of Jackson's most influential leaders. "When one of our major businesspeople is educated about an issue--a new curriculum, corporal punishment--and can speak knowledgeably, then people listen," explains Winifred Green. That awareness has brought hope that long-term problems, such as inequities between schools in low- and middle-income neighborhoods, can be addressed. Hope, in turn, has attracted the effort of principals and teachers, many of whom are now actively helping with the council's work. The press has shown an interest, too: the local newspaper has run articles and op-ed pieces about middle school reform, and members of the council have been interviewed for television news.

Behind these accomplishments lies fidelity to a set of core principles. First, the council has insisted on working toward the goal of improving middle schools, not establishing itself as an institution, a choice that initially made it less threatening than it might have been to the school system. Second, the council has been serious about a strategy of inclusion. This has meant working hard to keep gender, race, and professional status in balance among its members, but also maintaining a determination to act together. Third, the council has clung tightly to the theme of improving the academic achievement of students; this, according to Green, has "put a frame around equity issues that people can understand."

The Council on Reform and Excellence has succeeded in bringing citizen participation to a new and higher level. In schools, among parents, through the press, and in the community at large, more people are now asking the question: "How do we achieve excellence and equity in education?" More important, though, the council is providing opportunities for people to work together to find answers.


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from WORKING TOGETHER: Harnessing Community Resources to Improve Middle Schools. By Anne Mackinnon. Published in 1997 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.