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Public Agenda helps communities and the nation
solve tough problems through:

Research that illuminates people's views & values;

Engagement that gets people talking, learning from each other and working together on solutions; and

Communications that spreads the word and builds momentum for change.

By doing so, we seek to contribute to a democracy in which problem-solving triumphs over gridlock and inertia, and where public policy reflects the deliberations and values of the citizenry.

Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. You can find out more about us in our What We Do and Frequently Asked Questions pages.

ON THE AGENDA

The High Stakes of Stakeholder Engagement: A Plea for Careful Planning from Public Agenda

Alison Kadlec
Feb 1, 2012

This post was written for the 20 community colleges participating in Completion by Design, a five-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aims to significantly increase completion rates for low-income students under 26. As a “National Assistance partner” for Completion by Design, Public Agenda provides direct assistance to the colleges to help them build capacity for solutions-oriented dialogue among faculty, staff and administration. Here, Public Agenda's Alison Kadlec discusses best practices for authentic internal stakeholder engagement. While the post is geared toward Completion by Design planning teams, the principles are useful for any authentic engagement process.

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You Can't Do It Alone: A New Guide to Creating Sustainable Change in Education Reform

Allison Rizzolo
Jan 24, 2012

Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.

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Press Releases

Jean Johnson

Senior Fellow and Special Adviser

Jean Johnson

Jean Johnson is a Senior Fellow and Special Adviser for Public Agenda. She has also served as Executive Vice President and head of Public Agenda's Education Insights division, which works to enhance public and community engagement in public education. As a member of Public Agenda’s senior staff, she has authored or co-authored Public Agenda studies on education, families, religion, race relations, the federal budget, retirement, welfare, and health care. Most recently, she was the lead author of the Public Agenda/Kettering Foundation report Don’t Count Us Out: How an Overreliance on Accountability Could Undermine the Public’s Confidence in Schools, Business, Government, and More. She was also the lead author of One Degree of Separation: How Young Americans Who Don’t Finish College See Their Changes for Success, a new study on young adults’ views on college underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In addition to her Public Agenda publications, Ms. Johnson is the author of You Can’t Do It Alone: A Communications And Engagement Manual For School Leaders Committed To Reform which will be published by Rowman & Littlefield at the end of 2011. She is also the co-author of a series of guides designed to help typical citizens understand complex public policy issues, all written with Public Agenda senior fellow Scott Bittle. Published by HarperCollins, the series includes: Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis; Who Turned Out the Lights? Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis; and Where Did the Jobs Go—and what Can We Do to Get Them Back (forthcoming in winter 2012).

Ms. Johnson has also written articles for USA Today, The Huffington Post, National Institute of Justice Journal, Educational Leadership, and Education Week. She has prepared papers and presentations for major organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Urban Institute, National Institute of Justice and the National Education Summit of the National Governors' Association. She regularly represents Public Agenda in the media and has appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal, CNN, the Today Show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and The O’Reilly Factor among others.

Ms. Johnson was instrumental in the design and development of Public Agenda Online, our Webby-nominated public policy web site. She is the co-author of the Citizen's Survival Kit and the 2008 Voter's Survival Kit, both written with Scott Bittle. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she developed a series of experimental citizen education campaigns for local news outlets including Public Summit '88, designed to help citizens discuss U.S./Soviet relations; SchoolVote, which focused on public school reform, and Condition Critical, with a spotlight on health care reform. The health care project was the basis of a nationally telecast PBS special.

Ms. Johnson has served on the Research Committee of The Ad Council, and is currently a member of the board of the National Issues Forums Institute, an organization which convenes citizens nationwide for non-partisan discussions on important issues.

Prior to joining Public Agenda in 1980, Ms. Johnson was Resource Director for Action for Children's Television in Boston, where she authored a number of articles on television and children. In addition to her work at Public Agenda, Ms. Johnson is a director of Sugal Records, a small, New York-based classical music recording company. Ms. Johnson graduated from Mount Holyoke College and holds master's degrees from Brown University and Simmons College.

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