More important is that all of these groups feel ownership of the plan and the effort that your initiative makes to alert the community to your issue, bring it to the forefront, and deal with it. They can bring both information, and, ultimately, an action plan back to their segments of the community, and help to gain support for your initiative.
Without their support, there's less chance of actually getting your issue into public consciousness and onto the local agenda. Identify and recruit a planning group. Put together a representative group that can help to make the best plan possible and carry it out effectively in the community. Pick and define your issue carefully. It's crucial to define your issue clearly enough so that people can easily understand it, and narrowly enough so that it can be addressed. An example could be an increase in a particular type of cancer in a region.
The cancer increase may be complex; you may want to refine the focus on:. Choosing and defining your issue carefully will greatly increase the chances that you'll actually be able to do something about it. Plan for a communication campaign , not just for a one-time barrage of information or persuasion.
Envision the whole campaign, not just the beginning. Address public opinion. Obtaining support of the public provides advantages; you'll have community support for what you want to do; the media will take notice and further reinforce that support; and policy makers and funders will be more likely to formally consider the issue and provide you with resources. A plan for getting issues on the local agenda, therefore, should include aiming at public opinion.
Address unofficial policy. Try to find out why those who set or influence policy believe and act as they do. Approach them with individual stories of the effects of the issue on local people told by those people themselves where possible. Have conversations with them to discover what their major concerns are.
These may inform you about how to frame the issue. Show people there are things they can do. Volunteering, writing letters to the editor or to policy makers, talking to friends, and speaking out at public meetings are some ways that people can help.
Address public policy. To change official policy - and thus to place your issue permanently on the local agenda - you need to mount an advocacy effort, and work with legislators and local officials. The major elements of such a campaign are:.
Follow up. Once there are laws or regulations that address the issue, it is, by definition, on the local agenda. Don't forget to follow up as needed. If your goal is simply to bring the issue to public notice, use that notice to move to the next step in the process. If a law has been passed, maintain contact with policy makers and the public to keep the issue at the top of their consciousness.
Getting and keeping issues on the local agenda is not a temporary job: it takes ongoing effort. While the ultimate goal of getting an issue on the local agenda may be to change official policy through laws or regulations, reaching that point takes a plan for educating the community to the existence and importance of the issue.
You have to address not only official policy, but also public opinion and unofficial policy. Success can be assured with two key factors: paying attention to the timing of the effort and to the inclusiveness of the planning processes. Timing includes taking advantage of a political situation, a crisis that must be dealt with, or a situation where new information or media has brought the issue attention.
Involve all stakeholders and as many sectors of the community as possible to encourage ownership of the plan - and the issue - among as many people as possible. The actual planning process itself includes careful selection of a planning group and defining the issue; planning for a long-term campaign; and addressing public opinion, unofficial and official policy, to bring about change.
There should be a plan for follow-up once change has been accomplished, so that gains can be maintained. Leaders to Learn From. Current Issue. Special Reports. EdWeek Research Center. EdWeek Top School Jobs. EdWeek Market Brief. Menu Search. Sign In Subscribe. Make common cause with other groups. Try to draw in other groups that share your concerns about the issue, or that can be convinced that they should.
Become the authority. Always do your homework, and be able to counter arguments against your effort. You should know as much as possible about your issue, and should be able to demonstrate why addressing it is necessary, and why it needs to be addressed in particular ways if that's part of your campaign. If you can't counter arguments against it, then it may be time to rethink your position.
Is some of your thinking inaccurate? It's better to do what's most helpful for the community than to make yourself look good by not admitting that you're wrong. Take advantage of opportunities. When those events that we discussed above in "When should you try to gain support?
Point out how they demonstrate the need to address the issue. Employ your knowledge and status as an expert to show people what could be done to change the situation.
Never let a chance to gain support pass you by. Use the media. By establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with local newspapers , radio, and TV including the citizen-access cable station , you can get your message out to the public , and build a base of public support.
Use the Internet. A community website, an on-line forum or chat group or listserv, a large e-mail list - all of these can be effective tools for building community support and keeping people informed.
They also provide a fast and easy way to organize supporters for action. Gain support one individual and organization at a time. Often, public support gets built through many personal contacts over time. Once you have an individual on board, perhaps you can persuade her to host a house party of her friends and acquaintances to discuss the issue, or to participate in a community presentation.
Perhaps she'll just discuss the issue with her friends, who'll discuss it with their friends. You can reach a lot of people that way. People trust most those whom they know best. You can gain an enormous amount of support, especially in a close neighborhood or small town, just by word of mouth. Don't pass up the opportunity.
Ask people to do something, rather than just telling them about the issue. People are more likely to support you if they can feel effective in doing so. Giving them an opportunity to influence the results of addressing the issue gives them ownership of the process.
Some things the public might do:. Create activities or events that highlight the issue, and also involve the public. Examples include organizing the clean-up of a vacant lot with volunteer labor, and a "Take Back the Night" evening rally against street violence. Each of these events also implies a follow-up: the first could result in turning the now-neat lot into a neighborhood playground; the second could evolve into a neighborhood watch program or a campaign to reclaim the nighttime streets for the law-abiding.
As your support grows, demonstrate it at every opportunity. Most people want to be in the majority. If they're convinced that supporting you is backing a winner, they'll do it.
Recognize and give awards to community members who do things to affect the issue and demonstrate their support for your work. When you give an award or hold a recognition ceremony , be sure to have the media present.
Celebrate accomplishments publicly. Cede control of the effort to the community, if that's feasible. A community may be more willing to support something that's seen as an indigenous, grassroots effort. You and your organization should remain involved, but not necessarily as the leader of the effort. Whether community control makes sense in your community depends upon the situation, and what needs to be done. Follow up and maintain support. Once you've gained public support, you have to keep it.
Don't take the support of any individual or group for granted, but continue to maintain contact, and to court their backing. Continue also to expand your base of support, adding new people and groups at every opportunity.
The ideal here is that every single person and organization in the community will support your effort. You'll probably never reach that goal, but if you try, the chances are you'll develop solid and powerful community support that will make sure your issue is addressed.
Real public support for addressing issues is more than simply public knowledge of those issues. Rather, it implies that most people see them as needing to be dealt with as quickly as possible for the good of the community. Public support is crucial, because it lends credibility to your efforts, helps you gain further support, provides strength for action or political pressure, and creates community ownership of and responsibility for measures to deal with the issue.
In order to build that public support, you need support first from key individuals and groups in the community - trusted figures from various walks of life to whom people listen, or whose credibility is high because of their involvement in the issue.
Building public support is an ongoing process - indeed, it should never stop - but can be especially effective when the issue is highlighted by a crisis, or by particular events or situations. New information or publications that draw attention to the issue can also be used to advantage, as can political opportunity.
Any time the issue is before the public is a good time to try to enlist community support for addressing it. Nationwide, the 1 to reduce their chances of successfully completing a degree average is to 1. Tese young people were also less likely to say that they had chosen their college or university based It is also important to remember that advising students on explicit criteria such as its academic reputation, the on higher education choices is just one of many things availability of fnancial aid or the liklihood that it would that guidance counselors do.
Studies of how counselors help them get a good job after graduation. Tey also sometimes fll in as substi- 3 tute teachers or assist with other stafng shortages. As the survey demonstrates, the judgments Many degree programs for guidance counselors do not young people make about their high school counselors are ofer coursework on helping students make the best often harsh, considerably harsher than the judgments they postsecondary choices or on aiding them and their make about their high school teachers or their advisers at the 1 a merican School Counselor association.
Page 6 families to navigate the complicated world of fnancial institutions ranging from Columbia and City University 4 aid and college loans. Students from 5 guidance counselors. And and economic landscape that has changed immensely and n one of this is to mention the more than 3, possibili- continues to do so. A few decades ago, a high school ties nationwide. Only a subset of academically oriented students went on to college.
Today, however, most good Just as postsecondary education is more necessary than it 10 jobs require a college degree or certifcation of some kind, was in the past, so too is it likely to be more costly.
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