How Public Input Shapes the Clerc Center's Priorities:

Identifying Critical Needs in Transition from School
to Postsecondary Education and Employment

By Judith M. LeNard, M.Ed.

In 1994, the Clerc Center invited 16 representatives from the various constituencies served by the Clerc Center to act in an advisory capacity to the vice president. These representatives, who later became known as the National Mission Advisory Panel (N-MAP), came from:

• center or residential schools for the deaf,
• day schools for the deaf,
• mainstream programs with deaf and hard of hearing students,
• regular elementary and secondary education programs,
• university programs,
• the deaf community,
• former students of Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (KDES) and the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), and
• parents of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

At its initial meeting, N-MAP considered a large number of potential priorities for the Clerc Center's national mission, then narrowed the list to three:

• literacy for all,
• family involvement, and
• transition from school to postsecondary education and employment.

N-MAP identified these large priority areas, but it was the Clerc Center's responsibility to define and expand each area. The Clerc Center developed a process (called Partners for Progress) to include representation of all of its constituencies in the course of identifying critical unmet needs within each of the three priority areas.

Partners for Progress is the primary mechanism through which the Clerc Center identifies priorities for national mission activities in the three priority areas. In developing this mechanism, the Clerc Center has drawn on the experience and guidelines of the National Science Foundation Grant Proposal Process (1996), the National Science Board and National Science Foundation Staff Task Force on Merit Review Work (1996), the National Institutes of Health Grants and Contracts Process (1995), the U.S. Department of Education's Program Effectiveness Panel (1988) and System of Experts Panel (1997), and the Gallaudet Research Institute's selection and review process for priority research funding (Carol Traxler, personal communication, February, 1996). The purpose of Partners for Progress is to increase the impact of the Clerc Center's efforts in research, development, and dissemination by:

• identifying critical unmet needs within each of the three priority areas, and
• working collaboratively with programs and individuals to meet these needs.

To complete the initial step of identifying critical unmet needs, the Clerc Center employed many and varied sources of information through the strategies described below.

Strategies for Collecting Public Input

The Clerc Center gathered information from constituents using a number of different strategies over a period of several years. The first two strategies, Frequently Asked Questions and the Priority Feedback Project, began in 1996 and provided excellent background in each of the three priority areas and a base of information used in successive strategies.

Frequently Asked Questions. This first strategy collected information from the teachers and staff of KDES and MSSD, who receive a number of questions and comments—many from parents—through phone calls, letters, and visits to the schools requesting information about the education of students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DiPietro, 1997). Clerc Center teachers and staff compiled a list of questions most frequently asked by parents and educators from across the nation. The list was sorted into the three priority areas. Most of the questions in the area of transition were the "eternal" questions familiar to many professionals: Will my son go to college? What kinds of jobs do deaf people get? Will my daughter be able to get a scholarship to college? Will the school help my daughter get a job? What percent of graduates go to college? What will happen to my son if he can't go to college? These questions are at the root of transition planning for both parents and professionals working with deaf and hard of hearing youth.

Priority Feedback Project. The second source of public input also included all three priorities. The Priority Feedback Project conducted in 1996 was the first systematic endeavor to gather public input on the three priority areas for the Clerc Center's national mission (Hallau, 1997). Clerc Center teachers and staff were asked to identify individuals and programs throughout the nation that they felt contributed in important ways to the education of deaf and hard of hearing individuals. Seventy-six potential contacts were selected, representing identified constituencies. The following concepts guided the selection of the final list of potential contacts:

• Contacts should be in similar proportion to the number of deaf and hard of hearing students placed in specific programs.
• Two-thirds should be contacts from schools and programs serving deaf and hard of hearing students; the rest should include parents, individuals, and representatives of postsecondary programs, organizations, or agencies.
• Individuals who received multiple nominations should be included on the list of potential contacts.
• The various regions of the country should be represented, with as many different states participating as possible.

Twenty-one representatives of constituent groups, including public schools, schools for the deaf, parents, agencies, and postsecondary institutions, participated in in-depth telephone and TTY interviews. The interviewers asked three questions about each of the priority areas of literacy, family involvement, and transition from school to postsecondary education and employment:

1. What are the areas of greatest need?
2. What resources are needed that are not currently available?
3. What individuals or programs come to mind as important contributors in this priority area?

Of those individuals interviewed, approximately 50 percent represented public schools, 25 percent represented center schools, and the other 25 percent included parents, a service agency, and a postsecondary institution. Thirty-one additional contacts were attempted.

This first effort at collecting public input was a valuable learning experience for the Clerc Center. The phone and TTY interviews were an enlightening opportunity to talk with and get the perspectives of a variety of people. The contacts were very interested and impressed that the Clerc Center took the time to call them for feedback. The results of these interviews are summarized in the third section, "Results from the Public Input Process on Transition."

Based on their experiences, the contacts made suggestions for revising the process. Their suggestions included making the survey shorter by focusing on one priority at a time, or by first focusing on the expertise of the contact then, if he or she expresses an interest, exploring other areas.

The Clerc Center analyzed the problems with the 31 calls that could not be completed. About one-third reached wrong numbers or numbers that were not in service. Another one-third did not return calls after numerous attempts and/or messages had been left. The remaining calls reached respondents that were unable to schedule a convenient time to call back. This process for gathering public input, while yielding valuable information, proved to be time-consuming and labor-intensive.

This first systematic public input effort benefited the Clerc Center in several ways. In addition to the insights into critical needs in the three priority areas, the Priority Feedback Project provided guidance for future work on the process of public input. It also demonstrated the value of several important modifications:

• the need to target respondents with questions that clearly focus on their expertise and interests,
• the need to gather information through shorter and more focused surveys, and
• the need to gather information in a variety of formats.

The Priority Feedback Project also provided valuable contacts for future input and review efforts.

Stimulus Paper and the National Dialogue. When the Clerc Center chose family involvement as the first priority area for in-depth public input, additional strategies for gathering information were implemented. To identify the critical needs in family involvement, the Clerc Center sponsored a National Dialogue on Family Involvement (Pre-College National Mission Programs, 1996). This two-day meeting included 11 experts in early childhood education, parents of deaf and hard of hearing children, researchers, educators, and state project directors. As a part of their preparation, participants responded to a stimulus paper developed by two faculty members in the Gallaudet University Department of Education describing major premises in family involvement.1 This stimulus paper was also sent to more than 60 people with interest in families of deaf and hard of hearing children and youth. Twenty-two individuals, including parents of deaf children, administrators, teachers, and researchers, provided written feedback on each of the 16 premises in the stimulus paper.

The results of the National Dialogue and the feedback on the paper were synthesized with feedback from the 21 phone and TTY interviews from the Priority Feedback Project and findings from the most frequently asked questions, primarily questions from parents about the long-term future of their deaf and hard of hearing children.

All of the information gathered about family involvement through this process was synthesized and is currently being used for the Clerc Center's national mission projects and the programs in KDES and MSSD.

From the family involvement input process experience, the Clerc Center learned the power of these input strategies and how to modify them to make them more focused. The first National Dialogue showed the Clerc Center the effectiveness of giving experts time to freely interact face-to-face on critical issues. The more diverse the group, the better the dialogue. The task of writing responses to each premise in the concept paper proved a less satisfactory way to structure written input. Writing required considerable time on the part of the respondent and, because of overlap within the premises, was too open ended and sometimes confusing. A similar process was later used to identify critical needs in transition, but it was modified to keep the written responses more focused. An additional questionnaire that allowed respondents to provide input based on personal experiences without the need to first review the stimulus paper was also adopted as an input strategy.

1 This stimulus paper on family involvement has been revised and is currently available as a publication by Bodner-Johnson and Sass-Lehrer (1999) in the Clerc Center's Sharing Ideas series.

Go to Part II: Public Input Process for the Transition Priority Area

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