Giving Compass' Take:

• Alex Cortez argues that there are four ways to harness parent power to make and sustain real change in education systems to benefit students. 

• How can parents in your community leading the charge on education? What support would most help their efforts? 

• Learn about the impact of parents on school quality. 

Most parents in underperforming school systems do not possess the economic power to move to better school systems, and too few know how to activate their personal power to influence change in their current school systems.

Many communities with failing schools lack even basic information to know that their schools are failing and to understand what policies and politics are causing this failure.

Turning “latent demand” into “actionable demand” is about power: informing and organizing parents so they can exercise their innate power — individually and collectively — to create and sustain change.

There are four strategies that informed and organized parents can use to exercise their power:

  1. Parents as Partners: Parents exercising their power as co-educators of their children, either in collaboration with schools or through other resources.
  2. Voting With Their Choice: Parents exercising their power (a) to choose the school they believe is the best fit for their children’s needs (within whatever constraints around choice exist in their community), and (b) to make decisions about the many choices within a school that reflect the needs of their children.
  3. Voting With Their Collective Voice: Parents exercising their power through collective action on an issue campaign to influence those in authority to change policies.
  4. Voting With Their Vote: Parents exercising their power through electoral action to influence who holds a position of authority or to directly decide policy through a ballot initiative.

When these types of systems-change campaigns are successful, they also often require parents to again exercise their power as partners or exercise the power of their choice to ensure they and their children can fully access and adopt the benefits a changed system offers.

However, these strategies need not be employed linearly. Parents and organizations can begin with any of these strategies and pursue them in any sequence or combination over time.

Some organizations may exercise all of these strategies directly, while others collaborate with their local education ecosystem to divide and execute — while mutually reinforcing the success of one another’s efforts.

Lastly, parent empowerment efforts are dynamic and cyclical. Organizations and communities can employ an ever-changing mix and sequence of strategies to fit their specific local political, policy and educational performance context.

Read the full article about parent power by Alex Cortez at The 74.