Driving across tracts of new-home development in El Paso, Texas, one can't miss the signs of charter-school momentum. Charter-school enrollment has been growing in Texas for years, but in many localities and even at the state level, charter schools had until recently encountered harsher treatment from policymakers than what advocates have…

As literacy leaders, we know that printed words carry great meaning and power. Today, there is a widespread belief that advocacy over government concerns or policies can be adequately achieved using social media. While a well-timed and phrased social media post can supplement advocacy efforts, advocacy must be driven by deeds even more than words.…

This article outlines a semester-long advocacy project that walks students through the steps to develop a successful advocacy campaign, culminating in a trip to the state capitol to "lobby" legislators. The manuscript provides faculty with the basic structure for the project and suggests gradable assignments. The project builds on the…

The need for adult education programs and services is great, yet federal and state funding and enrollment have declined. This reality means that the field is burdened to protect what federal dollars still exist. One approach to address these funding challenges is to engage students in making the case to funders and policy makers for addressing…

Art Ellison is longtime advocate for adult education, having managed numerous advocacy campaigns over the past forty years on the state and national levels. Prior to his employment in 1980 as the NH State Director of Adult Education he worked for many years as a high school teacher and as a community organizer. In this article, Ellison offers some…

This article describes how positioning an organization to be seen as trusted and expert on an issue requires careful relationship-building, patience, and an abundance of time. Such an effort often requires help, and so American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) and Washington Partners are working together to further AIHEC's goals.…

US public adult basic skills education, as adult education researcher Thomas Sticht has often pointed out, is on the margins of public education. By many measures, in the past decade it has experienced significant further decline. In the last decade and a half, according to Sticht's (2015) analysis, "enrollments in the Adult Education and…

Adult educators know that adults and families change their lives through adult education. Adult education also positively impacts a host of social and economic issues. Yet this fact is largely unknown or misunderstood by the general public. Resources have become increasingly scarce, while at the same time adult educators are asked to do more with…

The names of operating systems and devices have been on the lips of unlikely people lately. In this day and age, superintendents, state commissioners of education, and even state legislators certainly should understand and care about technical details, but the author is just not used to hearing such things from them. The reason for the…

Institutions build armies of alumni advocates to influence legislators and shape public opinion. This article describes two types of alumni advocacy: grasstops and grassroots. Grasstops advocacy engages smaller, targeted groups of alumni who have a stronger, more influential connection with legislators and other public officeholders. Grassroots…

When American Association of School Administrators (AASA) and other membership organizations try to engage individuals in advocacy, a frequent exhortation is "Contact your representatives in Congress." Professional membership groups also stress that written communication is more powerful than phone calls to a representative's office, and they…

This article elaborates on parent advocacy groups, a key component in meeting the needs of gifted children. The case for parent groups couldn't be stronger--or more urgent. According to Nancy Green, Executive Director of the National Association for Gifted Children, "Quality gifted education exists in places where there are strong parent groups."…

This manual was designed primarily for use by individuals with developmental disabilities and related conditions. It is hoped that it is also useful for families, as well as service coordinators and providers who directly assist families and individuals with developmental disabilities. The focus of this manual is to provide easy-to-read…

This article deals with the importance of building partnerships between legislators and educators in order to impact educational legislation. To this end, the faculty in the college of education at a large, urban university made institutional changes to establish a proactive relationship amongst stakeholders. As a result of this exchange, we were…

Lynette Brown-Snow, vice president of marketing and government relations for the Community College of Philadelphia, is one of several community college leaders across the country who have taken up one of the challenges proffered by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) in its 2012 report, "Reclaiming the American Dream:…