THE FIRST 100 DAYS
LESSONS LEARNED FROM RACE TO THE TOP ROUND ONE WINNERS
AUGUST 2010
Stakeholder Engagement:
Lessons from Tennessee
Race to the Top (RTTT) has created what some
have called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to transform education in America. Many
observers have been encouraged by the more
than 34 states that changed their laws or
regulations to make their RTTT applications
more competitive.
While these changes
are clearly a positive step, the reality is
that changing laws and regulations is much
easier than changing day-to-day operations in
districts, schools, and classrooms. For change
to occur at this level, all key stakeholders – from
students to teachers to parents to business
and community leaders – must learn to think
differently about their role in the education
system. This will require states to engage
stakeholders in a deep and meaningful way –
far beyond what traditionally happens.
This memo discusses a framework for
stakeholder engagement that has been used
to guide the Race to the Top stakeholder
engagement efforts in Tennessee, especially
the efforts led by the State Collaborative on
Reforming Education (SCORE), a statewide
education nonprofit. Although this framework is
likely generalizable to other states, the specific
manifestations of stakeholder engagement will
almost certainly differ across states based on
local circumstances.
The Framework
In Tennessee, SCORE has thought about
its stakeholder engagement efforts using a
framework that considers both the target
audiences and the depth of each audience’s
engagement. Although there are an infinite
number of potential audiences, this framework
combines all the audiences into two groups: (1)
educators, including school board members,
superintendents, principals, and teachers and
(2) the public, including community leaders,
business executives, parents and voters.
This framework imagines each audience’s
SCORE
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Four Components of Stakeholder Engagement
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level of engagement as being at one of two
levels, labeled “deep” and “broad.” Deep
engagement involves intensely engaging a
relatively small number of individuals in the
details of a specific component of work, with
the individuals often playing a critical role in
defining or executing that specific component
of work.
Broad engagement focuses on
engaging a large number of individuals at a very
high-level in various components of work, often
after many of the decisions relating to those
components of work have been finalized. When
combined, these audiences and engagement
levels produce a two-by-two matrix outlining
four components of stakeholder engagement
(see above figure).
The first component of stakeholder
engagement is building a guiding coalition.
In Tennessee, the coalition includes three key
1207 18th Avenue South, Suite 326, Nashville, TN 37212
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tel 615.727.1545
groups: (1) political leaders (2) educators and
(3) business and community leaders. Political
leaders are at the table because they are
responsible for ensuring an adequate policy
and funding structure is in place. Educators
are at the table because they will ultimately
be responsible for implementing the reform
strategy. Community leaders, such as business
executives, foundation directors, and non-profit
leaders, are also at the table, as they can play
a key role in providing additional resources and
sustaining momentum for the reform effort.
Together, the guiding coalition is responsible
for seeing the reform effort through, even as
leadership changes and implementation
challenges emerge. For the guiding coalition to
remain strong in the face of these challenges,
all members of the coalition must be deeply
invested in the reform strategy. For this to
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fax 615.727.1569
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www.tnscore.org/rttt