Local accountability requires community participation

As the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues efforts to reduce the U.S. Department of Education’s role and return greater respon­si­bil­i­ty to states and local com­mu­ni­ties, we are enter­ing a time that brings both oppor­tu­ni­ty and concern. 

Local com­mu­ni­ties hav­ing a stronger voice in edu­ca­tion can be a good thing. We know our chil­dren, our fam­i­lies, and our com­mu­ni­ty. But we also have to remem­ber why many fed­er­al pro­tec­tions and guardrails were cre­at­ed in the first place. They were not put in place because inequities might hap­pen. They were cre­at­ed because inequities were already happening. 

Programs like Head Start, estab­lished in 1965, were cre­at­ed to expand oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren grow­ing up in com­mu­ni­ties expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty and help ensure they entered school ready to learn. 

Brown v. Board of Education did not occur because local com­mu­ni­ties vol­un­tar­i­ly rec­og­nized that seg­re­ga­tion was wrong. The case con­sol­i­dat­ed chal­lenges from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C., ulti­mate­ly prompt­ing the Supreme Court to rule that racial seg­re­ga­tion in pub­lic schools was unconstitutional. 

That his­to­ry matters. 

It reminds us that sys­tems do not always cor­rect inequities on their own. At the same time, local deci­sion-mak­ing can cre­ate tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and solu­tions that reflect the needs of our com­mu­ni­ty. The key is mak­ing sure local account­abil­i­ty tru­ly includes the local community. 

Whether you have been part of con­ver­sa­tions about equi­ty and edu­ca­tion for years or you are com­ing to them fresh, this mat­ters if you care about chil­dren and the future of Clark County. 

What HB 257 means for Kentucky  

Kentucky House Bill 257 is now law. It changes the edu­ca­tion assess­ment and account­abil­i­ty sys­tem for Kentucky. It allows dis­tricts to devel­op local­ly devel­oped indi­ca­tors of qual­i­ty along­side state account­abil­i­ty measures. 

Those mea­sures can include stu­dent well-being, school safe­ty, local­ly iden­ti­fied pri­or­i­ties, and oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to demon­strate learn­ing through real-world expe­ri­ences. The law also rec­og­nizes that “vibrant learn­ing” should hap­pen in part­ner­ship with fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties, and the local workforce. 

I love the def­i­n­i­tion of vibrant learn­ing: “edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ences that engage stu­dents in rel­e­vant, authen­tic, and joy­ful learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.” I want that for our chil­dren. The ques­tion we must ask is: Who gets to help define what that looks like? 

From the Clark County Equity Coalition’s per­spec­tive, HB 257 cre­ates both an oppor­tu­ni­ty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty. Fortunately, Clark County did not begin this work with HB 257. 

Clark County has already begun the work 

Clark County Public Schools (CCPS) has already begun the work. CCPS wants stu­dents to leave school with strong aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge and the skills, expe­ri­ences, and con­fi­dence need­ed to thrive in life, work, and their communities. 

That vision is cap­tured in the Portrait of a Clark County Learner, devel­oped through sur­veys, com­mu­ni­ty con­ver­sa­tions, work ses­sions, and col­lab­o­ra­tion with edu­ca­tors, fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and the University of Kentucky’s Next Generation Leadership. The Board of Education approved the por­trait in May 2023. 

Today, CCPS is work­ing to move the por­trait from a doc­u­ment into the every­day stu­dent expe­ri­ence through rel­e­vant, authen­tic, engag­ing, and joy­ful learn­ing. That includes con­nect­ing por­trait com­pe­ten­cies to class­room instruc­tion, cre­at­ing real-world learn­ing expe­ri­ences, devel­op­ing cap­stones, giv­ing stu­dents oppor­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate what they know, con­nect­ing them with authen­tic audi­ences, and expand­ing how suc­cess is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through tools such as the Greatness Dashboard. 

HB 257 does not start this work. It pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build upon it. 

The school dis­trict shared that at the heart of this work are a few impor­tant ques­tions: What do we want stu­dents to know and be able to do? How do we know they are grow­ing? And how do we ensure every stu­dent has mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate that growth?  

Local control means we have to show up  

This is where par­ents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers become espe­cial­ly impor­tant. More local account­abil­i­ty must mean more mean­ing­ful local participation. 

CCPS has been gath­er­ing com­mu­ni­ty data to inform deci­sions. When inquir­ing about how things are going, some­thing stood out to me. Clark County Public Schools serves approx­i­mate­ly 5,600 stu­dents. Yet one com­mu­ni­ty sur­vey recent­ly used to help guide this work received only about 80 responses. 

That should make us all think. 

I hear par­ents say there are too many sur­veys, emails, mes­sages, and requests for feed­back. I under­stand. We are busy, and it is easy to over­look one more sur­vey. Then a deci­sion is made that we don’t agree with, and we won­der why our per­spec­tive wasn’t considered. 

But I encour­age us to think about what hap­pens next. 

Having a voice in the process also means choos­ing to use that voice when the oppor­tu­ni­ty is avail­able. Our par­tic­i­pa­tion mat­ters, and the more we engage along the way, the more our expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives can help shape the deci­sions that impact our stu­dents and community. 

Now is not the time to be complacent. 

Kentucky is giv­ing local com­mu­ni­ties greater respon­si­bil­i­ty for defin­ing edu­ca­tion­al suc­cess, and yes, that includes us. We need to attend the meet­ing before we dis­agree. Complete the sur­vey while feed­back is still being gath­ered. Read the data before there is a cri­sis. Build rela­tion­ships with edu­ca­tors before we need some­one to solve a prob­lem for our own child. 

We must learn how to engage in the process in a pro­duc­tive way while deci­sions are still being made. When only a small num­ber of peo­ple par­tic­i­pate, those few voic­es can unin­ten­tion­al­ly become the voic­es rep­re­sent­ing an entire com­mu­ni­ty. This is not about cre­at­ing con­flict. It is about cre­at­ing partnership. 

Equity and implicit bias still matter  

I know words like equi­ty and implic­it bias have become polit­i­cal­ly charged, so I will share plain­ly about what we mean. 

For the Clark County Equity Coalition, equi­ty means rec­og­niz­ing that chil­dren enter the same sys­tem with dif­fer­ent needs, expe­ri­ences, bar­ri­ers, and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and the prac­tice of car­ing enough to ask whether every child has a mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed and thrive. 

Implicit bias does not mean some­one is inten­tion­al­ly racist, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, or try­ing to harm a child. It means we all have lived expe­ri­ences and assump­tions that can influ­ence how we inter­pret anoth­er per­son­’s behav­ior or potential. 

Research shows that even well-mean­ing adults can make deci­sions that affect chil­dren dif­fer­ent­ly based on race, dis­abil­i­ty, socioe­co­nom­ic cir­cum­stances, or oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics. That is worth under­stand­ing and address­ing togeth­er. Most peo­ple work­ing with our chil­dren want them to succeed. 

Good inten­tions mat­ter. But out­comes mat­ter too.  

“A National Institute of Mental Health-sup­port­ed study found that Black/Hispanic chil­dren expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty and Black chil­dren not expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty received sig­nif­i­cant­ly more teacher-iden­ti­fied behav­ioral com­plaints, even though stan­dard­ized obser­va­tions found no dif­fer­ences in objec­tive dis­rup­tive behav­ior between groups. Researchers con­clud­ed that the find­ings sug­gest racial bias in inter­pret­ing and report­ing children’s behav­ior can begin as ear­ly as preschool.” 

Study Furthers Understanding of Disparities in School Discipline. National Institute of Mental Health. 

“The Government Accountability Office also found wide­spread dis­pro­por­tion­ate  dis­ci­pline of Black stu­dents and stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties across school types and lev­els  of school pover­ty. More recent GAO (United States Government Accountability Office)  research found that Black girls received harsh­er pun­ish­ments than White girls for sim­i­lar  behav­iors such as defi­ance, dis­re­spect, and dis­rup­tion.” (2024, September 10). 

K‑12  Education: Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in  School Than Other Girls. U.S. Government Accountability Office.  

When deci­sions are being made about who is con­sid­ered gift­ed, who is rec­om­mend­ed for advanced oppor­tu­ni­ties, who receives sup­port, whose behav­ior is viewed as dis­rup­tive, or whose con­cerns are believed, we should be will­ing to ask: Who is ben­e­fit­ing? Who is being left behind? Who is miss­ing from the room? And what does the data tell us when we look beneath the over­all num­bers?  

Looking beneath the overall number  

An over­all school or dis­trict num­ber can look great while indi­vid­ual groups of stu­dents are hav­ing very dif­fer­ent experiences. 

We need to under­stand how our Black and Brown stu­dents are doing, the expe­ri­ences of stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, stu­dents fac­ing socioe­co­nom­ic chal­lenges, LGBTQ+ stu­dents, English learn­ers, and oth­ers who may expe­ri­ence barriers. 

Naming those groups does not mean they mat­ter more than oth­er chil­dren.  It means every child mat­ters enough for us to notice when the expe­ri­ences or out­comes of one group look dif­fer­ent from the whole. 

We also need to ask not sim­ply whether oppor­tu­ni­ties exist, but who actu­al­ly has access to them. 

HB 257, for exam­ple, directs the Kentucky Department of Education to exam­ine access to advanced mid­dle-school math­e­mat­ics, includ­ing how stu­dents are iden­ti­fied and what bar­ri­ers may exist. It is not enough to say: “We offer the pro­gram.” We also have to ask: “Who is in the pro­gram?” And if some stu­dents are con­sis­tent­ly miss­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, our first ques­tion does not have to be, “Who is to blame?” It can be: “What can we learn, and what can we do dif­fer­ent­ly?” That moves us toward problem-solving. 

Partnership requires both sides  

For the Clark County Equity Coalition, this work is not about assum­ing teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, or school board mem­bers are inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ing chil­dren. It is about cre­at­ing sys­tems strong enough that equi­ty does not depend sole­ly on indi­vid­ual inten­tion. Good peo­ple can work inside sys­tems that still pro­duce unequal out­comes. That is why trans­paren­cy, data, rela­tion­ships, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion mat­ter. That is also why dia­logue between par­ents and edu­ca­tors matters. 

When edu­ca­tors con­sid­er the par­ent per­spec­tive, remain flex­i­ble when pos­si­ble, use plain lan­guage, explain acronyms, and do not assume fam­i­lies already under­stand edu­ca­tion­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy, con­ver­sa­tions can change. 

But the respon­si­bil­i­ty goes both ways. 

Parents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers must also be will­ing to lis­ten, under­stand that edu­ca­tors oper­ate with­in poli­cies and legal require­ments, and rec­og­nize that we may not always get the answer we want, but we keep work­ing toward a solu­tion. Partnership does not mean we always agree. It means we care enough about our chil­dren to keep talk­ing when we don’t.  

We have to keep showing up  

I rec­og­nize that re-engag­ing is not always easy. Sometimes we stop show­ing up because we had a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence. We spoke and did not feel heard. We became frus­trat­ed. Or we got tired. 

I under­stand that. 

I can think of places where I need to be will­ing to re-engage too. None of us likes being uncom­fort­able. But we can­not allow one dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ence to remove our voice from the room per­ma­nent­ly. We can come back dif­fer­ent­ly, more informed, more pre­pared, more will­ing to lis­ten, and still will­ing to ask dif­fi­cult questions. 

So my mes­sage to par­ents, grand­par­ents, care­givers, edu­ca­tors, advo­cates, faith com­mu­ni­ties, busi­ness­es, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers is sim­ple: Get involved before a prob­lem aris­es.

Complete the sur­vey. Attend the meet­ing. Read the data. Ask the ques­tion. Build the rela­tion­ship. Listen to per­spec­tives dif­fer­ent from your own. Celebrate what is work­ing, and when some­thing could be bet­ter, become part of the solution. 

When you see a child or group of chil­dren falling through the gaps, do not assume some­one else will speak up. 

Be will­ing to be that voice. 

And when some­one rais­es a con­cern that has not affect­ed your child, be will­ing to lis­ten any­way. Our edu­ca­tion sys­tem, like many orga­ni­za­tions, is filled with bureau­cra­cy, rules, poli­cies, process­es, and legal require­ments. Sustainable change is rarely quick or easy. 

But slow does not mean impos­si­ble. We keep learn­ing. We keep ask­ing ques­tions. We keep build­ing rela­tion­ships. We keep the dia­logue going. 

And most impor­tant­ly, we keep show­ing up. Clark County Public Schools calls its vision Growing Greatness. I believe our com­mu­ni­ty has a role in that great­ness too. Our schools can­not do this alone. Parents can­not do it alone. Community orga­ni­za­tions can­not do it alone. The gov­ern­ment can­not do it alone. 

It will take all of us. 

Because if Kentucky is giv­ing local com­mu­ni­ties greater respon­si­bil­i­ty for defin­ing edu­ca­tion­al suc­cess, then we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to make sure every child is rep­re­sent­ed in that definition. 

Our chil­dren are worth us stay­ing in the conversation. 

References and recommended reading  

• Portrait of a Clark County Learner (CCPS)
• Civil Rights and Disability Organizations’ Joint Statement in Opposition to Administration Efforts to Dismantle Head Start
• House Bill 257 (Kentucky General Assembly)
• Brown v. Board of Education (National Archives)
• Louisiana Cannot Turn Back the Clock on Civil Rights