Excerpted from our abstract:
To find areas of common ground in Michigan’s education reform landscape, we studied not only the reform areas present in Michigan’s current educational climate, but also the process involved in uniting coalitions to better understand the supports and barriers related to reaching consensus.
Data collection and analysis centered on two primary sources: interviews of influential players in Michigan’s education system who are representatives of important groups in the state, and observations of consensus-building meetings.
Building consensus in education reform is difficult, especially when so many people have divergent views of what’s best for the education system. Through interviews of stakeholders and observations of a working advocacy coalition, we were able to demonstrate that there are education reform issues that people believe are necessary to change things for the better in Michigan. Some areas of common ground, such as school funding, are contentious and will require much time and intentionality to gain broad support, but other issues like dual enrollment and early childhood programming are less controversial and more likely to move quickly through an intentional consensus building process toward policy action. We learned that a group of diverse stakeholders will find more success in reforming education if it takes the time and effort to find good leadership, plan thoughtfully, invite a cross-section of people to the negotiation table, communicate with one another, and be guided by common beliefs.