What's Trust Got to Do With It: A Communications and Engagement Guide for School Leaders Tackling the Problem of Persistently Failing Schools - Public Agenda presents a blueprint for education leaders on how to engage communities in transforming persistently failing schools so that they create the conditions under which teachers and students can succeed. The report includes best outreach practices culled from education, communications and engagement experts that hold varying perspectives on how to approach school reform. (Public Agenda, December 2011)...

Fixing Failing Schools: Building Family and Community Demand for Dramatic Change - This report addresses specific barriers leaders need to tackle when taking action in persistently failing schools, and presents effective strategies for overcoming barriers and building demand for change. (Public Impact, May 2011)...

The Rural Solution: How Community Schools Can Reinvigorate Rural Education - This report addresses the potential of the community school movement to concentrate supports and resources in low-wealth rural schools and build the kind of community-school partnerships that help children, their families, the school and the community succeed and thrive. The paper also includes profiles of three communities that have applied the concept in their schools. (Center for American Progress, September 2010)...

Squeeze Play 2009--The Public's Views on College Costs Today: Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education - This series of studies from Public Agenda and the National Center have monitored two different trends in the public perception of college education: 1) The necessity of higher education; and 2) the availability of higher education. Today, two thirds of Americans (67%) now saying that access to higher education is a problem. (National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, March 2009) ...

Constituents of Change - Community organizing has grown dramatically in the last decade as citizens seek to improve student achievement and transform the relationships between schools and communities. This report examines eight urban groups from communities across the country. The first in a planned series of papers on a five-year study, this paper details the historical foundations, ideological bases, theoretical models and contextual factors shaping each group’s school reform goals, values, strategies and methods. (Kavitha Mediratta, New York University, September 2004)...