Taking Root

Communicating the College- and Career-Ready Agenda

Building a College- and Career-Ready Coalition

Why a Coalition?

Passing college- and career-ready policies is just the first step in ensuring
that meaningful reform will take hold. The implementation of these policies
typically requires an extended time frame and seeing results may take even
longer. Sustaining your hard-won college- and career-ready reforms is no
easy task, but it is critical to do so that reforms can take root. To maintain
support for the reforms you will need to be in policy “campaign” mode and
continue to engage a diverse cross-section of stakeholders whose energies
will no doubt be pulled in different directions throughout the process.

You may also be challenged by well-meaning reformers who believe in

what you are doing but would do it just a little differently, not to mention the
opponents actively working to undermine your efforts. Most importantly,
you must sustain your efforts in the face of changing state leadership with
changing priorities, which could mean serious setbacks if you have not built
a network that will bridge these changes and keep your reform agenda as a
top statewide priority.

Launching a coalition around the college- and career-ready agenda in your

state can help you build the broad-based, ground-level support you will need
to weather the challenges you will confront.

Issues to Consider

Membership. While the coalition should start with your core policy and
communications team and supporters, membership should be broad and ex-
tend beyond your traditional allies. You should consider the kinds of people
best situated to help you bridge current and future leadership changes. For
example, you might want to choose someone who works for a long-serving
member of your state legislature who is considered a true leader and who
is never challenged for office. Consider also those people whom you will
eventually need to win over to gain acceptance/adoption of your plan, such
as educators and administrators. You should bring these people to the table
early and often to win their support and help in promoting your agenda and
sustaining it from year to year.

1775 Eye Street NW, Suite 410 • Washington, DC 20006 • P 202.419.1540 • www.achieve.org 1
Consider also including odd bedfellows – those people whom you might not
immediately think are concerned about education. For example, you might
consider reaching out to religious or community groups that have the ear of
powerful members of the state legislature. Education might not be such a pri-
ority that these groups would lead an effort, but they might, for a number of rea-
sons, care about it enough to join your coalition. These groups in turn become
another channel to your target audiences and messengers for the agenda.

In addition, no reform should be entirely state-led and state-supported.

Therefore, coalitions ideally should include champions from both inside the
government – who may be in a position to make policy changes – as well as
champions from outside the government – who can more readily afford to take
the long view, including local champions who can bring the reform movement
into schools and communities, where the reforms will have the biggest impact.

Organization. As with your core communications team, you will want to estab-
lish a governance structure for your coalition. This does not have to be overly
complicated, but having a few rules and principles in place will help guide the
mission and work of the coalition – and will pay large dividends in the long run.

• Leadership: You should appoint a chair or a few people (a steering com-

mittee) to serve in leadership roles for the coalition. Rule by committee is
rarely a success. You must decide who is empowered to call meetings and
make decisions. Should you decide to have a steering committee, pay close
attention to the membership mix and ensure that it reflects the diversity you
hope to have in your coalition.

It is important to choose organized individuals who are respected by the

members of the coalition, who are well-regarded by state leaders and who
have the time to serve in a leadership capacity. Given the extra responsibility
that leadership brings, you should consider how and how often leadership will
change hands. While you want to make sure key players in the coalition con-
tinue to be involved – after all, you do not want to suffer a blow from changed
leadership within your own coalition when the whole purpose of your efforts
are to manage such changes at the state – you also do not want to discour-
age certain members who feel overtaxed by their responsibilities. Decide up
front how your leadership will be staffed and supported so that the task does
not become overwhelming.

(Note: Your coalition’s leadership may overlap with the core policy and com-
munications team you assembled to get your communications strategies
organized initially – and in fact, there should be connectivity between the two
– but that is not to say that the two teams universally need to be one and the
same.)

1775 Eye Street NW, Suite 410 • Washington, DC 20006 • P 202.419.1540 • www.achieve.org 2
• Shared principles: As discussed earlier, you are looking to create a broad-
based and diverse coalition with members from non-traditional backgrounds.
Thus, it will be useful to develop a set of shared principles to remind every-
one why they felt it was important to join this effort and what they are rallying
around. These principles are also an important recruiting tool for enlisting
others to join your cause because they clearly state the coalition’s beliefs
and goals. Shared principles serve another critical purpose: they keep the
coalition focused. Don’t be surprised if newcomers or outsiders try to ex-
pand the charter of the coalition; already agreed to principles are a good way
to prevent mission creep that can divert you from your core goals.

• Roles and responsibilities: You should establish boundaries for your co-
alition. On what issues will you focus? What is required to be a member?
Again, defining what seem like straightforward ideas into an organizing struc-
ture for your coalition will help you stay on track and guide you in the activi-
ties you decide to undertake and the kinds of members you seek to recruit.

• Governance: Finally, it will be important to put together a decisionmak-

ing structure to establish a path for reaching consensus, and ensure that
all members know the ground rules so as to avoid and resolve internal dis-
agreements.

Keeping the Coalition Alive

Now that you have a coalition, you have to keep it alive. If you build it, they
might come, but they won’t stay if you don’t give them something to do or pro-
vide them with useful information. You have to make the coalition worth their
time for joining. Keeping members engaged is a key priority.

Regular meetings, information updates and special quarterly events are just
a few of the ways you can keep your members involved. You can also as-
sign tasks to different members, and, depending on how large your coali-
tion becomes, you might even consider forming committees and delegating
responsibility to smaller teams. For example, you should establish a regular
conference call, perhaps one every other week, with the coalition members to
update them on the latest developments, check in on assignments and dis-
cuss next steps. Committees could set their own conference call schedule,
checking in with an executive or steering committee as necessary. You could
also establish a listserv to share relevant news articles, legislative actions, in-
formation on related events, etc. with your coalition members. The key is not
to get overly complicated but to keep your members sufficiently engaged so
that they can see a reason for being a member of your coalition.

1775 Eye Street NW, Suite 410 • Washington, DC 20006 • P 202.419.1540 • www.achieve.org 3
SAMPLE ONE-PAGER ON YOUR COLLEGE- AND CAREER-READY
COALITION

Below is a template for a one-page overview of your coalition that you can use
to describe your coalition and as a marketing piece to attract others to your
cause. Taking the time to consider the governance issues above and then fill
out this Q&A will not only help in your recruiting efforts, it can also serve as a
good organizing activity around which you can start to coalesce your coalition.
Ideally, your coalition will have a Web site or address so that this document,
your statement of principles and a list of current supporters, at a minimum, are
available for all to see. To build a strong coalition, transparency is important,
especially when recruiting new members.

Who is the “College- and Career-Ready” Coalition?

• Define your college- and career-ready coalition – why it came together, what it will
focus on, etc. This should be an overview statement of your principles.

What does the “College- and Career-Ready” Coalition do?

• Define the coalition’s main advocacy points and activities in an easy-to-read, bullet-
pointed list. List any upcoming coalition meetings.

What is the “College- and Career-Ready” Coalition’s mission?

• Develop a concise mission statement for the coalition.

How is the Coalition funded?

• Prospective members will want to know how the coalition is being funded and if they
will be expected to make a donation of time and/or money. If you are running your
coalition on a shoestring with volunteers and in-kind contributions, say so.

How is the Coalition managed? Who’s in charge?

• List members of your leadership and how decisionmaking will occur.

Who are your Coalition’s members?

• Make a generalized statement to describe your membership. You do not need to list
every individual member, but rather the sectors represented within the coalition The
purpose of this statement is to signal who makes up the coalition so that prospective
members and those seeking information about you can quickly see the stakeholders
you attract.

How can I get involved?

• Describe ways for joining or lending support, including asking prospective members
to “sign on” to the statement of principles. You should include contact information to
learn more.

1775 Eye Street NW, Suite 410 • Washington, DC 20006 • P 202.419.1540 • www.achieve.org 4
Copyright © September 2009 Achieve, Inc.