Lots of research

Much research shows that students do better when the key people in their lives communicate about how they are doing and what they can do. We know that youth do better when they get regular feedback from teachers on their classroom performance (Hattie 2008). Teachers teach better when youth communicate how their teaching is affecting them (Jones and Yonezawa 2008/2009; http://www.tripodproject.org/index.php/about/about_background/). Parents and teachers each support children’s school progress more effectively at home when they communicate about their children’s performance in the other setting (Taveras et al 2010; Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti 2005; Lawrence-Lightfoot 2003) Administrators lead school reforms better if their staff discuss pedagogy (Daly et al, 2010) and data on student progress (Boudett et al 2005). Teachers teach better when they talk about teaching with other teachers (Daly et al 2010; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009).

Research on organizational learning and behavior (Spence 2009, Jewell-Sherman 2008); data-driven decision-making (Boudett et al 2005); assessment (http://www.tripodproject.org/index.php/about/about_background/), community organizing and “family engagement” (Mediratta et al 2009, Warren et al, forthcoming, Oakes and Rogers 2006; Henderson et al 2007) and youth engagement and motivation (Jones and Yonezawa 2002, 2008, 2009; www.efficacy.org) all indicates that students are served better if the people in the student’s social network communicate about how youth are doing and what they can do.

Each actor in the social network holds a useful “fund of knowledge” (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti 2005) that would help the others serve the young person better. At any moment, each partner knows something that the others need to know in order to promote student success. If people get better information on how young people are doing and what they can do, they can better attend to the experiences of every learner, reinforce moments of success more quickly and effectively, and reduce moments of failure with more timely and appropriate intervention. Conversely, students fail when people fail to stay on top of their progress and needs, or fail to share opportunities that are available and needed. Think what happens when a parent or service provider is missing from a support team meeting and cannot provide an update, or when a youth himself is missing from class and not explaining why.

So, to partner in young people’s success, people need tools and strategies helping them to share information on the individual children they share (What does Jose love to learn? How is he doing on credits toward graduation?); on the classrooms they share (what’s the homework? Who has an idea on the assignment?), on the schools they share (what afterschool opportunities are available for children?), and on the resources and information in the city they share (where’s the free science fair?).

In any community, supporting young people requires a combination of face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting, an afterschool discussion between student and teacher, or a parent coffee hour where people share information and build relationships), print communications (like a handout in a backpack, a sign on the wall informing a parent of an opportunity, or or a copy of student work at a parent-teacher conference), and electronic communications (like a student checking her grades online or a parent posting a local resource on a school listserv).

Adding more communication infrastructure in public education means helping to ensure that the people who need to communicate information and ideas to collaborate in young people’s success can do it.