Audience

Current efforts attempt to engage narrow groups of participants to collaborate towards shared topics. A complete network would engage all potential participants around the topic of education and allow them to organize and structure evidence along many divergent topics and goals.

Various stakeholders in education have said that they need a Network allowing them to share and gain ideas for improving the lives of young people. Community organizers need ideas from people who have successfully reduced suspensions in their communities; principals need to hear from other principals in similar demographic situations, or from parents who have successfully collborated with principals elsewhere. Parents need ideas about what is possible and happening in schools elsewhere, and what children and youth are *able to do* in other educational environments, so that they can become fully engaged and informed advocates for their children's education. Teachers need to see success stories from teachers elsewhere who have grappled with issues central to education anywhere.

While each of these folks currently can go to Google or other websites, such searches return masses of undigestible and unranked information; it is hard to sift through "what works" or to start up dialogue with networks of similarly situated people. Existing networks on Ning or elsewhere also track users into silos (e.g., only other teachers), making it harder for people to access folks in other "roles" (e.g., teachers finding parents, young people, or principals) who have experienced particular programs or approaches. Finally, young people themselves are almost never invited to weigh in on educational approaches they themselves experience. All such "users" are our intended audience, because they all are stakeholders in children's educational fates.